Overview

An online survey of 2,755 musicians and songwriters shows they are quite divided in their opinions about the impact of music file sharing by Internet users. There is no clear consensus regarding the effects of online file-sharing on artists - about a third of artists say that file-sharing is simultaneously good for promotional purposes, but also bad because file-sharing circumvents payments to artists. Also included in this preliminary report are artists’ attitudes towards the legal measures the RIAA has pursued, and what artists say are the effects of file-sharing on their own livelihoods. These preliminary results were reported at the Future of Music Coalition conference in Washington, D.C., May 2004. Additional analysis of this data will be conducted for forthcoming reports.