IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ebl/ecbull/eb-12-00580.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Why do pirates buy music online? An empirical analysis on a sample of college students

Author

Listed:
  • Grazia Cecere

    (Telecom Ecole de Management, Institut Mines-Télécom and Université Paris 11, ADIS.)

  • Nicoletta Corrocher

    (KITeS, Bocconi University)

  • Fabio Scarica

    (Vodafone)

Abstract

Despite a considerable amount of theoretical and empirical research in industrial organisation literature on the relationship between piracy, music sales and their antecedents, a significant gap exists for what concerns the linkage between digital music piracy and the recent success of online music stores (OMS). Our aim is to investigate the motivations behind digital music purchases on a population of college students who are music pirates. In doing so, we rely upon an original dataset from a survey carried out in 2010 on a population of university students, who are pirates. The results show that the likelihood that pirates buy digital music from an OMS is positively related to the level of Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) skills of the respondents, including the experience in online purchases, and to the individual interest in music.

Suggested Citation

  • Grazia Cecere & Nicoletta Corrocher & Fabio Scarica, 2012. "Why do pirates buy music online? An empirical analysis on a sample of college students," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(4), pages 2955-2968.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-12-00580
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2012/Volume32/EB-12-V32-I4-P284.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Connolly, Marie & Krueger, Alan B., 2006. "Rockonomics: The Economics of Popular Music," Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, in: V.A. Ginsburgh & D. Throsby (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 20, pages 667-719, Elsevier.
    2. Martin Peitz & Patrick Waelbroeck, 2004. "The Effect of Internet Piracy on CD Sales: Cross-Section Evidence," CESifo Working Paper Series 1122, CESifo.
    3. Regner, Tobias, 2015. "Why consumers pay voluntarily: Evidence from online music," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 205-214.
    4. Stan J. Liebowitz, 2005. "Economists Examine File-Sharing and Music Sales," Industrial Organization 0505001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Sucharita Chandran & Vicki G. Morwitz, 2005. "Effects of Participative Pricing on Consumers' Cognitions and Actions: A Goal Theoretic Perspective," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 32(2), pages 249-259, September.
    6. Regner, Tobias & Barria, Javier A., 2009. "Do consumers pay voluntarily? The case of online music," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 395-406, August.
    7. Andrew Leyshon, 2001. "Time–Space (and Digital) Compression: Software Formats, Musical Networks, and the Reorganisation of the Music Industry," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 33(1), pages 49-77, January.
    8. Sana El Harbi & Gilles Grolleau & Insaf Bekir, 2014. "Substituting piracy with a pay-what-you-want option: does it make sense?," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 277-297, April.
    9. David Bounies & Marc Bourreau & Patrick Waelbroeck, 2007. "Pirates or Explorers ?Analysis of Music Consumption in French Graduate Schools," Brussels Economic Review, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles, vol. 50(2), pages 167-192.
    10. Mortimer, Julie Holland & Nosko, Chris & Sorensen, Alan, 2012. "Supply responses to digital distribution: Recorded music and live performances," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 3-14.
    11. Felix Oberholzer-Gee & Koleman Strumpf, 2007. "The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(1), pages 1-42.
    12. Birgitte Andersen & Marion Frenz, 2010. "Don’t blame the P2P file-sharers: the impact of free music downloads on the purchase of music CDs in Canada," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 20(5), pages 715-740, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Aguiar, Luis & Martens, Bertin, 2016. "Digital music consumption on the Internet: Evidence from clickstream data," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 27-43.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Joel Waldfogel, 2012. "Music Piracy and Its Effects on Demand, Supply, and Welfare," Innovation Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 12(1), pages 91-110.
    2. Godefroy Nguyen & Sylvain Dejean & François Moreau, 2014. "On the complementarity between online and offline music consumption: the case of free streaming," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 38(4), pages 315-330, November.
    3. Lee, Jonathan F., 2018. "Purchase, pirate, publicize: Private-network music sharing and market album sales," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 35-55.
    4. Godefroy Dang Nguyen & Sylvain Dejean & François Moreau, 2014. "On the Complementarity between Online and Offline Music Consumption: The Case of Free Streaming," Post-Print hal-01344836, HAL.
    5. Wojciech Hardy & Michal Krawczyk & Joanna Tyrowicz, 2015. "Friends or foes? A meta-analysis of the link between "online piracy" and sales of cultural goods," Working Papers 2015-23, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw.
    6. Brett Danaher & Michael D. Smith & Rahul Telang, 2014. "Piracy and Copyright Enforcement Mechanisms," Innovation Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 14(1), pages 25-61.
    7. Leung, Tin Cheuk, 2015. "Music piracy: Bad for record sales but good for the iPod?," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 1-12.
    8. Sana El Harbi & Gilles Grolleau & Insaf Bekir, 2014. "Substituting piracy with a pay-what-you-want option: does it make sense?," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 277-297, April.
    9. Felix Oberholzer-Gee & Koleman Strumpf, 2010. "File Sharing and Copyright," NBER Chapters, in: Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 10, pages 19-55, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Tyrowicz, Joanna & Krawczyk, Michal & Hardy, Wojciech, 2020. "Friends or foes? A meta-analysis of the relationship between “online piracy” and the sales of cultural goods," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    11. Shinichi Yamaguchi & Hirohide Sakaguchi & Kotaro Iyanaga & Hidetaka Oshima & Tatsuo Tanaka, 2023. "The impact of licensed and unlicensed free goods: an empirical analysis of music, video, and book industries in Japan," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 3(3), pages 1-22, March.
    12. Gans, Joshua S., 2015. "“Selling Out” and the impact of music piracy on artist entry," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 58-64.
    13. Joel Waldfogel, 2012. "Copyright Protection, Technological Change, and the Quality of New Products: Evidence from Recorded Music since Napster," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(4), pages 715-740.
    14. Samuel Cameron, 2016. "Past, present and future: music economics at the crossroads," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 40(1), pages 1-12, February.
    15. Joel Waldfogel, 2011. "Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie? The Supply of New Recorded Music Since Napster," NBER Working Papers 16882, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Joel Waldfogel, 2017. "How Digitization Has Created a Golden Age of Music, Movies, Books, and Television," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(3), pages 195-214, Summer.
    17. George Barker & Tim Maloney, 2015. "The impact of internet file-sharing on the purchase of music CDs in Canada," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 25(4), pages 821-848, September.
    18. Joel Waldfogel, 2012. "Copyright Research in the Digital Age: Moving from Piracy to the Supply of New Products," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(3), pages 337-342, May.
    19. Gerpott Torsten J., 2016. "A review of the empirical literature on Pay-What-You-Want price setting," Management & Marketing, Sciendo, vol. 11(4), pages 566-596, December.
    20. Sanz, Esteve, 2015. "Copyright indicators and the costs of symbolic production: The cultural dimension of telecommunications policy," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 208-217.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    music piracy; digital music; online music store;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D0 - Microeconomics - - General
    • L8 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-12-00580. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: John P. Conley (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.