Does Digital Piracy Hurt Sales?

After a recent conversation with a friend about digital piracy--and its alleged negative impact on sales of music albums and movie tickets--I found myself wondering how exactly a distributor could prove that piracy really is to blame for a decline in sales. That is, how could they prove that the rise of digital piracy wasn't just coinciding with a time when people no longer felt that the cost of purchasing entertainment was justified by the product they purchased?

I can imagine two points groups like the MPAA and the RIAA could try to prove, but both would be difficult. The two points are:

1. A significant number of people who download an illegal copy of a work would otherwise, if they had no other choice, purchase the work at full price; and
2. A significant number of people who download an illegal copy of a work do not then go on to pay for a legal copy of the work or purchase some equivalent works.

To the first point, let's suppose the record labels found a magic switch that, if pulled, would definitively end all digital piracy.  Would sales of albums then increase, or would it stay the same? I think the tendency is to suggest that this point is proved by looking at what record sales were before file-sharing sites became popular, and then looking at the overall decline in sales. However, this could be a coincidence. It is possible that many music downloads are more like impulse purchases, and if the means of impulsively downloading them did not exist, those users would not feel like it was worth the cost to buy the albums. And if that is the case, piracy is not really hurting record sales. And it might even help them.

Which leads me to my second point. It would be interesting to see how many consumers who purchase an album first became aware of it through an illegally downloaded copy. (I don't have a strong feeling with regard to how often this occurs, it is just an idea I had.) What if it turns out that many record sales come about because someone "samples" an album for free, decides he likes it, and then wants to pay for a legitimate copy? Additionally, suppose someone downloads an illegal copy of a popular new album, likes it, and then buys other albums by that artist? In these cases, piracy might actually be stimulating record sales. I have seen some of this in action in the world of Japanese movie fandom; otaku in the US have been known to download an illegal, fan-subbed version of a movie because it is not otherwise available in the US, but then when it does get a US release, those same people get excited to buy a copy.

In my points I used the phrase "a significant number" because these points would have to apply to more than just a few people, but obviously would not apply to everyone. If only a small number of people who download an album for free would instead buy it if they had to, it would not be a strong argument for the negative effects of piracy.

My Space-Music Death Fantasy

Not that I spend a lot of time thinking about my death, but since adolescence I have been pretty sure of one thing: in the best possible world, the lat thing I see before I die would be the end credits to the 1960s science-fiction television series The Outer Limits.

The Outer Limits has many charms that keep attracting new fans. Several episodes are well-written and acted, Conrad Hall's cinematography was always outstanding, and episode titles were among the best ever. I defy you to not want to see a science fiction story called "Keeper of the Purple Twilight" or--my favorite--"Production and Decay of Strange Particles." However, one aspect of The Outer Limits stands out most for me: its musical score. The music of The Outer Limits was created by Dominic Frontiere and Harry Lubin; Frontiere wrote the justly famous opening theme and much of the music for season one, and Lubin wrote much of the season two music. This includes a closing song that combines theremin-y "weird" music and romantic melodrama, which is the perfect compliment to the end credits slideshow of Milky Way photos. (I only recently learned that this song is a variation on another song he wrote: "Fear," for the television series One Step Beyond.) Every time I see it, I can picture being a wide-eyed boy in the 1960s and watching the show with all the breathless excitement of knowing that the stories might be fantasy, but the space race could make them realities very soon.

I am skeptical about the idea of life after death, but if any superior being does exist and wants my opinion on what would make a good afterlife, I cast my vote for the ability to travel endlessly through the cosmos, disembodied and free to go anywhere and explore anything. But I would consider it a perfectly acceptable second place if the last thing I ever experienced was the end credits to The Outer Limits: a perfect audio-visual representation of what that trip might feel like to me.