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The Introduction
“More than 60 million Americans have downloaded music and the number of file sharers
continue to grow rapidly” (Karagiannis et al., University of California, 2004)
“There’s no minimizing the impact of illegal file-sharing. It robs songwriters and artistes
of their livelihoods, [] undermines the future of music itself, [] threatening the jobs of
tens of thousands” (Sherman, 2003, RIAA)
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From these quotes, it sure seems that illegal music downloading is REALLY affecting record sales and the music industry!
Very well known, is the fact that the number of CDs shipped in the USA fell drastically, by 20%, to 750 million copies in 2003.
Thus, concerns about the effects of illegal music downloading, especially via p2p networks, are widespread.
After all, the Wall Street Journal stated that "At the end of 2003, a billion songs were downloaded each week, up from 500 million in February 2001" (Wall Street Journal, 19 Nov 2003)
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However, there is another side to it.
"The theoretical effect of file sharing on record sales is ambiguous" (Bakos et al, 1999; Takeyama, 1997; Varian, 2000)
2 recent studies, one by the University of Chicago, and the other a joint effort from the Harvard Business School and University of North Carolina have echoed that "music downloads have an effect on peoples' buying of CDs which is statistically indistinguishable from zero".
Many people also often state that they would not have bought the music CDs anyway. Downloading music via the internet just provides an alternative source of listening pleasure.
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Thus, the purpose of this research is to find out if the trend Singaporean teens downloading music really affects the music industry in Singapore, and at the same time, what the factors are that affect a teen to download music.
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