Does file sharing lead to lost sales?

I had missed this the other day in the Sunday New York Times: Does a Free Download Equal a Lost Sale?

RECORD industry executives hold it as an article of faith that the advent of file-sharing Web sites like Napster and Kazaa was largely responsible for a stunning decline in the sales of recorded music. From 1999 to 2003, after all, the number of compact discs and other forms of recorded music shipped in the United States plunged 31 percent.

Sure, other factors - including the stubbornly high price of CD's, a recession that cut into discretionary spending, a plethora of unappealing pop acts and the intense competition for the entertainment dollar - may have contributed. ...

While most studies conclude that free downloads depress music sales to some degree, Felix Oberholzer-Gee, an associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, isn't ready to add his voice to the harmony. In a paper he wrote with Koleman S. Strumpf of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he examined the correlation between popular downloads and popular CD's in the fall of 2002.

They found that Eminem's "8 Mile" soundtrack was the second most popular among albums sold, and that his song, "Lose Yourself," was the most popular among file sharers. It seems that downloading was more a symptom of an artist's popularity in the record stores than a barrier to it. "Our best guess is that peer-to-peer networks in 2002 had no effect whatsoever on sales," Professor Oberholzer-Gee said. ...

The best evidence to date is that many people buy fewer CDs because of file sharing, while many others buy more music because they're exposed to new music.

Repeat after me: File sharing will not lead to the death of the recording industry.