The Impact of Music Sharing on Album Purchases and Concert Attendance: The Case of Spain

Abstract

In the last decade, digital file sharing has gone from being a phenomenon confined to a small share of the population to become a phenomenon with a great social, media, economic and political impact. The reason is none other than the perception of a direct causal element between increasing downloading practices and decreasing purchases of cultural goods such as music albums, what we call the Replacing Utilitarian Perspective. In contrast, other studies argue that downloading practices on P2P networks do not replace the purchase of music albums, what we call the Complementary Consumption Perspective. This paper aims to empirically examine this relationship (download-purchase and download-attending concerts) in individuals’ behavior using the Cultural Habits and Practices Survey (SGAE, Spanish Ministry of Culture, 2007) and applying two multivariate techniques: linear regression for the number of albums purchased and logistic regression for attendance to concerts. Our results reveal that the more albums individuals share, the more albums they purchase in physical format, and the more likely they are to attend concerts. In addition, other variables influence both behaviors such as educational level, age, socio-professional situation or life cycle associated with paternity/maternity experience.