Are downloads really killing the music industry? Or is it something else?

[admin]

The music industry does like to insist that filesharing - aka illegal downloading - is killing the industry: that every one of the millions of music files downloaded each day counts as a "lost" sale, which if only it could somehow have been prevented would put stunning amounts of money into impoverished artists' hands. And, of course, music industry bosses' wallets. But we won't mention that.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/jun/09/games-dvd-music-downloads-piracy

There is an interesting graph in this Guardian article that shows that combined spending for games/music/DVD (sales and rental) is continuing going up, despite piracy going up too. But DVD rental, and particularly music sales, are down, but not because piracy is up but because game sales are way up. So it may be a case of people choosing to spend their money elsewhere, rather than lost sales to piracy that the music industry claims.

[drfsupercenter]

Downloads definitely aren't hurting the industry.

Look at X-Men Origins... despite the leak (or BECAUSE of it), the movie still made tremendous amounts of money, second only to X-Men 2. Sure, FOX b****ed and moaned about it not making as much as it could have, but who doesn't? It didn't exactly flop like some of the hardcore anti-piracy people thought it would.

And same goes with music. Eminem's Relapse album was leaked an entire month, if not MORE, before the actual release (My friend had it on his mp3 player, so I can confirm it)... and yet it just sold over a million copies already. Clearly, no relation.