After the Goldrush

Billboard had this interesting tidbit last week: Music sales are up in Sweden after the Pirate Bay case.  I hope more analysis will be forthcoming, but it's an interesting development.

In February, during the trial, John Kennedy said that every track stolen via Pirate Bay would have been purchased if it hadn't been for torrents - a comment that actually had listeners erupt in laughter. But, the premise of the case has always been that sales were hurt by the torrents, and these sales numbers from Sweden seem to back up the record exec's point. Another study, which came on the heels of the Pirate Bay case said that people who downloaded free music were 10x more likely to purchase music online.

There's nothing in this post about Neil Young - sorry - that whole gold rush reference was really a metaphor.