Forget what you've heard from the fine folks over at the RIAA. They've been telling us the sky is falling and that the illegal filesharing of MP3s have eviscerated the record industry, robbing artists of well deserved royalties and forcing venerable institutions like Tower Records into insolvency.

Too bad they were totally wrong. A landmark study published yesterday announced that P2P filesharing's effect on music sales is not "not statistically distinguishable from zero."

EMERGE has been saying this for ages now (we used to work in the music biz), but it was really just a hunch. Now there is quantifiable evidence from the Journal of Political Economy which punches some very significant holes in the conventional wisdom espoused by the record industry. It's worth noting that this rationale also motivated lots and lots of lawsuits, which in turn cemented the RIAA's role as the villain in terms of public perception.

All in all it's been a lose-lose situation. The industry is failing yet remains no closer to addressing the causes of this failure. And the public that sustains musicians and album sales has come to resent the industry over this misdirected assault on filesharing.

How will this all unfold?

It appears you don't have Flash installed.