What is the Effect of File Sharing on the Creation of New Music? A Critical Review of 'A Case Study of File Sharing and Music Output'

In a recent and unpublished study — Empirical Copyright: A Case Study of File Sharing and Music Output — Tulane University Law Professor Glynn Lunney, Jr., concludes that “file sharing has not reduced the creation of new original music.” The claim is based on the correlation of music sales over time to the appearance of “new artists”, narrowly defined, appearing at the top of BILLBOARD’s Hot 100 chart. In this PERSPECTIVE, I provide a review of Dr. Lunney’s paper. Unfortunately, the empirical analysis in Dr. Lunney’s paper is some of the weakest in this area, and the defects in the analysis are many and varied. Put plainly, his statistical analysis is inexpertly performed; the empirical model is poorly motivated, poorly designed, and improperly estimated. Moreover, contrary to his claim, his results do not support his theory. Alternative and more plausible interpretations of Professor Lunney’s results suggest piracy has the expected negative consequences on the creative industries