For some time, at Perceptric we have been saying that P2P is
the new payola of old physical distribution system. Wherein, the music industry receives the benefit of P2P
down-loaders as word of mouth promoters of music to their peers and siblings.

In fact in The
Peering metrics of P2P we said:

“To prove the hypothesis over time that p2p downloads tend
to anticipate sales increases rather than to follow sales.”

Earlier this year we blogged about our measuring
tool, called P2PScore.

Now we present a small snippet of that data for your
edification.

 (This year, on the 26^th of June we had an external
event that upset the smooth growth of the normal chart activity.)

Here we present (fourteen weeks of statistics) for two songs
that were in the charts at the time.

50
= No.1 on the Charts.

Again – Enter Aria Chart at 0

The charts are generalized with only one sample per week,
the interesting statistics are down at the daily and hourly rise and fall in
popularity – which quite often matches commercial calls for action on radio/TV
and print press.

Clearly, the above charts indicate that P2P has lead the
rise of both songs both on the way up and the on the way down.

Although it is not clearly identifiable in a sample set of
two, they also would tend to indicate the potential of a music track to get to
number one……(you all will just have to take my word on that one……).

We have of course filtered our results according to the Geo
location of IP numbers, however there may be some anomalies based on current
ISP trends to incorrectly re-allocate IP numbers out of region – and to
commercial customers that may use them out of region.

Think DVD Zones to understand the nature of the identification
problem. DVD Zones only work if there are no devices in the other zones capable
of playing out of zone content. Similarly, with no rules governing the
allocation of IP numbers, occasionally a user whom looks like they are in Perth
W.A. may in fact be in a hotel in Phuket – or a home user from Medford,
Oregon using an anonymizing cache service
located in Canberra.

It would appear, that those musical artists that have an HD
or 720p music video available for download, fair better in the charts, than those
that do not. (Sample size 89 songs.)

(Song one – had over 14 Video versions of their track
available for download; Song two had none. The difference in total P2PScore is
extra-ordinary as both songs are by leading artists. ).

Three months ago, I would have bet that the 320×200 size was
the more likely to entice download and then ultimate purchase – it would appear
that I am wrong.

Our next exercise will be to correlate this data with “out
of zone” requests, attempting to match up international day/date/release
schedules with P2P activity and subsequent chart activity.

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