Spotify, File-Sharing and Incomplete Statistics
Since Spotify finally launched in the US, the discussion has reignited about what the benefits of it are for musicians.
One recent conversation has involved people quoting diametrically opposite statistics about the influence of Spotify on file-sharing in Sweden. Some people quoting a stat that says file-sharing has dropped as Spotify has rolled out, and others saying that there’s more file sharing with Spotify…
The problem with both statistics is that there’s no binary relationship between Spotify and file-sharing, and none of the articles I’ve seen writing about it have made any attempt to differentiate between different media being torrented, or indeed whether what’s been measured is number of unique users, number of files or quantity of traffic. All of which can be interpreted in myriad ways.