Peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing of music files over the internet does not hurt new music sales, contrary to what some music companies fear, a new study shows.

"Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero, despite rather precise estimates," authors Felix Oberholtzer of the Harvard Business School and Koleman Strumpf of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill wrote.

Oberholtzer and Strumpf added that their conclusions "are inconsistent with claims that file sharing is the primary reason for the recent decline in music sales".

The recording industry has argued filesharing was behind a 10 percent slump in 2003 sales.

AFP

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