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A study of file-sharing's effects on music sales says on-line music trading appears to have had little part in the recent slide in CD sales.

For the study, released Monday, researchers at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina tracked music downloads over 17 weeks in 2002, matching data on file transfers with actual market performance of the songs and albums being downloaded. Even high levels of file-swapping seemed to translate into an effect on album sales that was "statistically indistinguishable from zero," they wrote.

"We find that file sharing has only had a limited effect on record sales," the study's authors wrote. "While downloads occur on a vast scale, most users are likely individuals who would not have bought the album even in the absence of file sharing."

The study, the most detailed economic modeling survey to use data obtained directly from file-sharing networks, is sure to rekindle debates over the effects of widely used software such as Kazaa or Morpheus on an ailing record business.

Big record labels have seen their sales slide precipitously in the past several years, and have blamed the falling revenue in large part on rampant free music downloads on-line. Others have pointed to additional factors, such as lower household spending during the recession, and increased competition from other entertainment forms such as DVDs and video games, each of which have grown over the same time period.

Executives at file-sharing companies welcomed the survey, saying it should help persuade reluctant record company executives to use peer-to-peer networks as distribution channels for music

"We welcome sound research into the developing peer-to-peer industry, and this study appears to have covered some interesting ground," said Nikki Hemming, chief executive officer of Kazaa parent Sharman Networks. "Consider the possibilities if the record industry actually cooperated with companies like us instead of fighting."

The study, conducted by Harvard Business School associate professor Felix Oberholzer and University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, associate professor Koleman Strumpf, used logs from two OpenNap servers in late 2002 to observe about 1.75-million downloads over their 17-week sample period.

That sample revealed interesting behavioural and economic data. Researchers found that the average user logged in only twice during that period, downloading about 17 songs. Some people vastly overshot that average, however — one user apparently logged in 71 times, downloading more than 5,000 songs.

Of respondents aged 18 to 24 who download, the study found, 33 per cent said they bought less music than in the past year while 21 per cent bought more. Of those aged 25 to 34, one quarter (25 per cent) bought less and 17 per cent bought more music.

The two professors narrowed their sample base by choosing a random sample of 500 albums from the sales charts of various music genres, and then compared the sales of these albums to the number of associated downloads.

Even in the most pessimistic version of their model, they found that it would take about 5,000 downloads to displace sales of just one physical CD, the authors wrote. Despite the huge scale of downloading worldwide, that would be only a tiny contribution to the overall slide in album sales over the past several years, they said.

Moreover, their data seemed to show that downloads could even have a slight positive effect on the sales of the top albums, the researchers said.

"Consumption of music increases dramatically with the introduction of file sharing, but not everybody who likes to listen to music was a music customer before, so it's very important to separate the two," Mr. Oberholzer-Gee said.

The study is unlikely to be the last word on the issue. Previous studies have been released showing that file sharing had both positive and negative effects on music sales.

The Recording Industry Association of America was quick to dismiss the results as inconsistent with earlier findings.

"Countless well-respected groups and analysts, including Edison Research, Forrester, and the University of Texas, among others, have all determined that illegal file sharing has adversely impacted the sales of CDs," RIAA spokeswoman Amy Weiss said in a statement. "Our own surveys show that those who are downloading more are buying less."

The RIAA argues that CD sales fell from a high of more than $13.2-billion in 2000 to $11.2-billion in 2003, a period that matches the growth of various on-line music piracy services.

The study comes on the heels of another U.S. study, by Ipsos-Insight, which reports that the number of Americans who pay to download music nearly tripled in 2003, to about 10 million.

The study called the rise in paying customers "a veritable explosion of fee-based" digital music services.

TEMPO, Ipsos-Insight's quarterly tracker of U.S. digital music behaviour, revealed that in December, 2003, as many as 22 per cent of U.S. downloaders aged 12 and older had paid a fee to download digital music off of the Internet.

"In the past year, high-profile litigation by the RIAA toward high-volume individual file-sharers coupled with the launch of several new consumer-friendly fee-based on-line music services has prompted many downloaders to experiment with paid downloading for the first time," Ipsos-Insight study author said Matt Kleinschmit said.

"This is the clearest sign yet that American music enthusiasts are becoming increasingly dependent on digitally formatted and distributed music, and as a result, are sampling many of the recently launched fee-based on-line music services to find a legal means of on-line music acquisition."

With files from Jack Kapica.