New Law Enforced on MP3 Album Leaks

Lawsuits are costly and have the potential to be counterproductive for the RIAA.

The RIAA is looking at categories of piracy and which ones are doing the most damage. Peer networks account for the vast majority of illegal downloading. After that, it is probably direct transfer through email or IM. Downloading from websites, I would guess, is probably less than 1% of all illegal downloads. The RIAA is primarily looking for ways to prevent or scare people out of downloading. Going after thousands of download sites is very costly and won't address 99% of how music is currently pirated.

As for leaks, it would seem logical that if you listen to a leak, and it sucks... you won't buy it. Considering that most releases SUCK... you do the math. Also, a lot of people simply want the song as fast as possible. If a song shows up in Lime Wire before it hits the store... a large percentage of people will not purchase it after they download it, again, especially if most of the songs are no good (which is pretty common, if you ask me).

I don't know about that, Jay.
I would think that if statistical analysis would show that leaking albums resulted in higher sales, the record industry would know about it. I'm not saying it's not true, but these companies are as rich as they are because they're good at this sort of stuff.

I hope it's true, but if it is and the record industry finds out about it, I don't see why they'd be prosecuting.

Well what i'm saying is not for downloading in general, so much as this kind of situation, a new album leaking on a fansite.. this sort of pre-release leak thing will usually involve more hardcore fans who are already hyped about a new release and are gonna buy it regardless of getting the mp3s.. and the leak usually functions as part of the anticipation and buzz building up..

As is documented here constantly in my comments section, a lot of hardcore fans are unable to perceive that their favorite artist ever sucks or makes mistakes of any kind :) so i'd think that what skwidawd describes is more likely in other DLing situations besides this one.. just a guess though.

I would love to see a good definitive study on the affect of leaks. It seems counter intuitive to me that a fan would still buy an album after the got it for free throuh the net a month early.

I feel for the artists. As a blogger I hate when my feed gets republished in whole on another site. Snippets are cool, but not wholesale stealing. And imagine if people got a hold of my posts while still in draft form!

Fans can still legally post 30 second Fair Use clips if they really want to help and promote their favorite artists.

I dunno, with "fan" being the key word in that sentence, I think it's counter-intuitive that fans wouldn't wouldn't buy the album afterwards.. I'f you're a serious fan of an artist than having some mp3s is not at all the same as owning the CD..

You're going in circles, Jay.
If everyone's a fan that's buying the album no matter what, there's no way a leak would help sales, either.
It's tough to purchase an album after downloading it, especially if the album is a disappointment. And I've found that a lot of times albums don't sound nearly as good when I download them, just because you miss out on a lot of aspects of the group and the album. I think liner notes and album covers just make people like the album more.

Some of the most (illegally)downloaded/leaked albums have also been some of the best selling albums of the past seven years or so (Eminem Show, Get Rich or Die Tryin, The Black Album).For a lot of customers, leaks are a lithmus test for deciding if an album is worth buying in the store.

No, I don't think I am. If, as you suggest, the leak neither help nor hurt sales, that would fit in fine with my theory (i said "similar if not better", i didn't say "better")

But, if we are agreeing for sake of argument that that hardcore fans were gonna buy the album either way, that makes it possible for the leak to increase sales by creating buzz around the upcoming release, attracting the attention of some non-hardcore fans.. if only 3% of those casual listeners buy the cd after downloading it, that's still a win because they had 0% of those people before the leak.

You may disagree with that, but it's not circular :)

Maybe it's an age thing, or a quality-of-music-has-gone-downhill thing. 'Cos I remember listening to WBLS and KISS back in the day, and everytime I heard "A WORLD..premiere..." on Marley's show I'd tense up, & wait to see what he was gonna hit us with. I don't ever remember being disappointed,if it was an artist I already had a well-established love for it would only make me more anxious for the album's release, & even if it wasn't up to par w/some of the artist's earlier work I'd still give benefit of the doubt as a loyal fan. And if it was a relatively new cat just breaking in more often then not it was good enough to make me sit up and take interest, maybe cop the single if I liked it enough.
Maybe both consumers AND artist are to blame, consumers for not showing enough loyalty to their favorite groups, and for the "give it to me NOW and don't expect me to pay anything for it" mentality that's so prevalent these days, and to the artists for producing 90% crap & expecting to get easy $$$ off of it.

Let's assume there were two record stores next to each other. One store charged for its music, the other gave it away for free. Gee, I wonder if the free store will take business from the store that charges.

Well, if the "free" store was giving away Will Smith's latest and greatest, and the store that charged was selling the Miles Davis Anthology at a reasonable price, it'd be a no-brainer for me. ;)