研究显示:没有DRM的音乐更好卖

新华网12月2日电 据美国科技博客Gizmodo报道，数字版权管理系统（DRM）被广泛地用于电子书和电影上面，使之难以被分享。在Napster的时代，几大唱片公司选择使用DRM来保护他们的音乐免受盗版的冲击。但是新的研究显示，这根本没有用。实际上，DRM会阻碍销售。

多伦多大学Laurina Zhang发表的报告称，如果没有DRM的保护，数字音乐的销售会增加10%。对于那些销售量低但销售时间长的专辑，收入增加可以达到30%，但对于销售量高的专辑没什么区别。

在这份研究里，最受欢迎的专辑在最差的情况下，即使没有DRM的保护销售收入也没有受到影响。Zhang统计了634名艺术家的5864张专辑，比较了采取DRM之前和之后的数据，同时区分销售量、风格和销售的自然波动。

这项研究是可行的，因为四大唱片公司都有一些专辑先是使用了DRM然后又去掉了。Zhang表示：

我利用了一项自然实验，百代、索尼、环球和华纳这四家唱片公司在不同时期去掉了DRM，以便检验放松分享控制是否会影响唱片发行。

如果专辑内容不变的话，销售时间越长，那么去掉DRM带来的销售收入就越多。这也许是因为不那么受欢迎的曲目通过个人分享获得传播的机会比在主流榜单上获得传播的机会多。所以现在该改弦更张了。

译者：林杉

百度新闻与新华网国际频道合作稿件，转载请注明出处。

A New Study Says You Sell More Music If You Get Rid Of Content Locks

Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems are used on things like ebook and movie files to make them more difficult to share. During the Napster era the major record labels got on board with DRMs in a big way hoping that they could reduce piracy by locking their music files down. But a new study shows what we\'ve all thought for a long time. It doesn\'t help. And in fact it DRMs hurt sales.

A new paper published by Laurina Zhang at the University of Toronto shows that revenues from digital music increase 10 percent when labels drop DRMs. The revenue increase can be as high as 30 percent for albums that sell low and slow over a long period, and there is no difference for the highest-selling albums.

So even in the study\'s worst case finding with the most popular albums, dropping DRMs doesn\'t hurt revenue. Zhang took data on 5,864 albums from 634 artists and then compared sales before and after DRM, while controlling for things like release dates, genre and natural sale fluctuation.

The research was possible because all four major labels have scenarios where they used DRM and then eventually dropped it on the same albums. Zhang says:

I exploit a natural experiment where the four major record companies – EMI, Sony, Universal, and Warner – remove DRM on their catalogue of music at different times to examine whether relaxing an album\'s sharing restrictions impacts the level and distribution of sales.

The longer a product\'s "tail," meaning the longer it sells consistent numbers, the more removing DRM increases revenue. This may be because less popular music benefits much more markedly from individual sharing compared to mainstream hits. Time to swap some tunes.