[LINK] P2P study: Music crackdown is bad for business

[Kim Holburn]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/13/long_tail_p2p/

> A study of P2P music exchanges to be revealed this week suggests  
> that the ailing music business is shunning a lucrative lifeline by  
> refusing to license the activity for money.
>
> Entitled "The Long Tail of P2P", the study by Will Page of  
> performing rights society PRS For Music and Eric Garland of P2P  
> research outfit Big Champagne will be aired at The Great Escape  
> music convention tomorrow. It's a follow-up to Page's study last  
> year which helped debunk the myth of the "Long Tail". Page examined  
> song purchases at a large online digital retail store, which showed  
> that out of an inventory of 13 million songs, 10 million had never  
> been downloaded, even once. It suggested that the idea proposed by  
> WiReD magazine editor Chris Anderson, who in 2004 urged that the  
> future of business was digital retailers carrying larger inventories  
> of slow-selling items was a Utopian fantasy.
>
> The P2P networks are harder to quantify, but apparently show a  
> similar pattern, where most of the action - and profit - is in the  
> 'head'. Each Top 100 CD on on PirateBay averaged 58,000 downloads a  
> week, for example. Lady GaGa's The Fame was downloaded 388,000 times  
> in a week from PirateBay alone. Like its predecessor, the new study  
> also finds that downloads follow a log-normal, rather a Pareto (or  
> "power curve") distribution as Anderson envisaged. The WiReD man had  
> guessed the shape of the internet - and picked the wrong shape.


....

lots more.  Interesting.

It's quite likely that the long tail is wrong but I think there are  
technological and statistical factors skewing the data as I've said  
before.  I wonder if someone has done a similar analysis of say amazon  
books.  I know I have often tried to buy CDs or DVDs from Amazon only  
to end up at the: "I'm sorry we only ship to the US." ("would you like  
to buy something else?"  Have a nice day! grrrrrr)

-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
Ph: +39 06 855 4294  M: +39 3494957443
mailto:kim at holburn.net  aim://kimholburn
skype://kholburn - PGP Public Key on request