Music sharing doesn't kill CD sales, study says

This study claims that music sharing isn't negatively effecting CD sales. Here's a big clip for those of you too lazy to read the article:

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."

Unlikely that this is the final word on the subject, but still interesting.