Although I do not have access to the full IFPI report on which this statement is based (Recording Industry in Numbers 2001), even a cursory glance through this article ought to give us grounds to doubt its conclusions. To take only the last point in the passage above as an example, the IFPI claims that 35% of those surveyed who reported downloading more than 20 songs a month also reported buying less music as a result. What is omitted here, however, is any mention of how the other 65% of the respondents answered this question. If 35% of these "heavy downloaders" reported buying less music, than it logically follows that the other 65% must either have maintained their music spending at the same level or increased it. In addition, we are given no information about the magnitude of the reported changes in spending in either direction; because of these omissions, it is impossible to draw any firm causal link between the behavior reported by the IFPI and the overall decline in global music sales in 2001.

Indeed, independent researchers who have examined this issue have reached very different conclusions than the IFPI. In a study released on 25 Feb 2002, a private Internet research firm, Ipsos-Reid, concluded that music fans who download music from the Internet (whether legally or illegally) are actually more likely to purchase recorded music:

...evidence shows that downloaders do not stop buying prerecorded compact discs when they discover downloading. In fact, 81% of downloaders report their CD purchases have stayed the same or even increased since they initially began downloading music from the Internet.

Jupiter Media Metrix, another Internet research firm, has also done a number of studies about music file-sharing and reached similar conclusions. Jupiter's most recent analysis, based on a national survey specifically focused on online music originally done in June 2001, concludes that music file-sharing actually has a polarizing effect on users, with some music downloaders reporting an increase in music spending while others reported a decrease. On balance however, Jupiter's analysts report that file-sharing leads to an increase in overall spending on music, a conclusion which directly contradicts the IFPI's claim that it is file-sharing and other forms of piracy which caused the 5% drop in global retail music sales in 2001. I quote extensively from Jupiter's results here as this study is the most in-depth survey on the topic which I have found in the literature:

In the summer of 2000, Jupiter released research demonstrating that Napster, the pioneering file sharing network, seemed to have a salutary effect on music purchasing by consumers. Despite this and similar findings by other researchers, the recording industry has continued to scapegoat file sharing, even as record sales have fallen over the past year.

Jupiter reexamined effects of file sharing and other potentially theft-enabling technologies on music spending, based on a survey of online music fans (i.e., users over the age of 18 who had visited a music site in the prior year) that was conducted in June of 2001--the year covered by the IFPI's report. By cross-tabulating a question concerning shopping habits with separate questions about technology ownership and usage, Jupiter ascertained that technologies such as file sharing, broadband, and CD-writable drives influenced consumers' music spending habits--in both directions. In essence, such technologies polarize the market.