Study: Pirates buy more music - Lables: "LALALALALA! I can't hear you!"

Blind_Io

Blind_Io

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http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/04/study-pirates-buy-tons-more-music-than-average-folks.ars

Those who download illegal copies of music over P2P networks are the biggest consumers of legal music options, according to a new study by the BI Norwegian School of Management. Researchers examined the music downloading habits of more than 1,900 Internet users over the age of 15, and found that illegal music connoisseurs are significantly more likely to purchase music than the average, non-P2P-loving user.

Unsurprisingly, BI found that those between 15 and 20 are more likely to buy music via paid download than on a physical CD, though most still purchased at least one CD in the last six months. However, when it comes to P2P, it seems that those who wave the pirate flag are the most click-happy on services like the iTunes Store and Amazon MP3. BI said that those who said they download illegal music for "free" bought ten times as much legal music as those who never download music illegally. "The most surprising is that the proportion of paid download is so high," the Google-translated Audun Molde from the Norwegian School of Management told Aftenposten.

Record label EMI doesn't quite buy into BI's stats, though. EMI's Bj?rn Rogstad told Aftenposten that the results make it seem like free downloads stimulate pay downloads, but there's no way to know for sure. "There is one thing we are not going away, and it is the consumption of music increases, while revenue declines. It can not be explained in any way other than that the illegal downloading is over the legal sale of music," Rogstad said.

Rogstad's dismissal of the findings don't take into account that the online music model has dramatically changed how consumers buy music. Instead of selling a huge volume of full albums?the physical media model?the record labels are now selling a huge volume of individual, cherry-picked tracks. It's no secret that the old album format is in dire straits thanks to online music, which is a large part of why overall music revenue is going down.

BI's report corroborates data that the Canadian branch of the RIAA, the Canadian Record Industry Association, released in 2006. At that time, the organization acknowledged that P2P users do indeed buy more music than the industry wants to admit, and that P2P isn't the primary reason why other people aren't buying music. 73 percent of of respondents to the CRIA's survey said that they bought music after they downloaded it illegally, while the primary reason from the non-P2P camp for not buying music was attributed to plain old apathy.
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And here in Sweden the cinemas had a record year last year... So the movie industry isn't exactly suffering either...
 
Going to the movies is a totally different thing from watching a bootleg version on a tiny screen with, in the best case scenario, 5.1 sound. Also, the fact that people who download music illegally buy more is because they are exposed to much more than someone who only listens to the radio/TV.
 
Just as we're speaking, I'm buying some merchandise off an artist's store, which should well (over)compensate for a couple of pirated cds :p
 
I think it's very possible that "pirates" are buying a lot of legal music as well. I'd love to buy legal music via iTunes or Amazon, but these services are not available over here (we have only AppStore in iTunes for instance). And I am too lazy to go to the CD store to spend hours searching for that one song I heard on the radio.. I just download it and that's that. The lazy way rules and the industry has to follow..
 
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SpitfireMK461 said:
So is piracy actually helping industries? I want to see a study on that.
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Of course not, that's silly because every pirated track IS away from the music label. However what is true, is that the direct dramatic effect on revenues caused by pirating is not as huge as big music lables make it out to be.

Furthermore piracy as such has been long misunderstood when regarding the music industry. One big use for which music fans in general download illegal tracks is for "teasers": you download a few songs from some album, which you may or may not fancy, but are not sure if you want to spend the 20? for the CD. You listen to the illegally downloaded tracks, and discover "Hey, this is some funky shit right here". And now you can go buy the album, knowing that your purchase will be a good one. Very much like testdriving a car.

As for the results from the Norwegian study, old news, for me at least since I am a musician (well, not exactly; I'm a drummer) and I tend to know a bit more about this sort of stuff.

The study doesn't prove anything per se, it just shows what music fans have known for a long time: those who consume music and other artist related products the most, also illegally download music the most. Back in the days before iTunes you would just go to a record store and pick a handful of CDs and buy those, not always knowing if the CDs are actually any good. Not anymore: as I said, testdriving.

And of course those not interested in music in general are the ones buying the least amount of albums, I really don't see where the surprise is there. That's just the most basic economics: there is demand and than there is supply: the latter can't exist without the former one. There is a reason Maserati doesn't try to sell their cars to the middle class in the suburbs: they don't have the money nor the interest to buy their products, same goes for music. Why would you buy a CD if you are not a music fan in the first place ?

The one actually good point in the article Blind_Io posted, was the one mentioning how CD sales have dropped, but singular, hand picked songs are now the big thing. Therefore the revenues naturally drop, because people aren't buying the whole CDs anymore - hardly anything to do with piracy and P2P downloading. It's much more costly to produce an entire CD and put it on sale than it is to just upload the newest single on iTunes - the profit per song from one single song bought from iTunes is nowhere near as good as the profit per song from an album featuring the same song.

Finally I would like to say I am by no means an avid supporter of illegal dowloading and I don't encourage anyone to do so. But I must confess, that I am not entirely pure and innocent on this matter: I do have some illegally dowloaded songs, but I only download some single songs from random artists I fancy, and that happens maybe once in two months. I like CDs, the booklets and the cover art. However piracy is not the antichrist EMI, Universal, Sony and other labels make it out to be.

No, piracy doesn't improve album sales, but one of the true reasons behind album sales diving (among others) is legal downloading in the form of iTunes and other similar sources. Also I would assume music is not such a big thing anymore compared to the 60's, 70's and 80's: everyone was some sort of musicfan, be it metal, disco, funk or reggae, thus buying CDs from your favorite artists was what you did when you had money. Nowadays music has become a sort of background noise for the larger masses, a consumer good instead of a thing of passion, since people have moved on to different things: games, consoles, electronics and cars.
 
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It also doesn't help that there have been a pathetically small number of good albums released in recent years. Bands and labels to the same thing. Make a hit song, stick it on a CD with a bunch of shitty filler, and sell it for 20 bucks to the suckers... err, customers/fans/etc. I got burned only so many times before I quit buying CD's until I've listened to the whole thing and decided for myself if it's worth buying. Even with movie tickets costing $8+ dollars, at least you get to experience the full film before decided whether or not to pay 20 bucks for it on DVD 6 months later. The record industry should lose money, for all the people they're ripped off over the years. Call it karma.

But I will say that I've personally discovered quite a lot of things through torrents that I ended up paying money for later. I've downloaded audiobooks, for example, and then proceeded to buy numerous books from that author soon afterward. Movies as well. A crap bootleg or DVD rip is good enough to know if the film is good or not, but it's not the same as full DVD/blueray quality on a big HDTV with surround sound.
 
I would say roughly 95% of the concerts I have ever been to (which, admittedly, is a rather high number), and probably 75% of the albums I have ever bought, are for artists whom I illegally downloaded songs from at first. However, my illegal downloads have been curbed as of late by my subscription to last.fm, so read into that what you will.

It's not a completely daft notion to suggest that illegally sampling someone's music can lead to other things like merchandise or concert sales... but then again, the RIAA doesn't see a dime from either of those.
 
I torrent alot of music- but you know what? I BUY when I like the music. I tend to be picky about who/what I listen to, and apart from a few artists I need to hear the album before I buy it, not after. If I like it, then great, I will pay money for it because I want to hear more, new songs. If I dislike it I ignore it- and save myself from being suckered into paying ?13 for rubbish.
 
Over the years downloaded probably up to 75GB of music (mp3, flac, mostly the same stuff over and over as i lost a few HDDs), for the time only bought two CDs.
 
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I'm that typical guy who downloads a ton of stuff and buys what he likes. Just sitting next to me on my desk right now are Fallout 3, Mass Effect, COD4, Portal and Team Fortress 2. Those are only the recent titles. A couple Black Keys and White Stripes albums, and the Wolfmother album, are also taking up some space now.

Of course I downloaded a lot more crap than that, mostly music wise. But the bulk of those albums only had decent singles and the rest blew. Why would I spring for the entire album when I can find out if it's worth buying based on the whole album instead of just a single?

The argument that always interests me is this. I can share a few albums with my friends no problem. What's the difference in that and uploading it to PB? A few more people have access to it, that's all. Without PB, I could probably distribute the music almost as freely.
 
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id agree... i buy anything i really like, music from iTunes and films from whatever shop has it cheapest
 
Makes sense, even through I pirate a lot of shit, I have spent about 400 euros in the last four years for online music. A friend of mine who does torrent a lot, spent over 3 grand on vinyls in the last two years. Iiiiinteresting :)
 
tigger said:
The argument that always interests me is this. I can share a few albums with my friends no problem. What's the difference in that and uploading it to PB? A few more people have access to it, that's all. Without PB, I could probably distribute the music almost as freely.
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The RIAA can track who you give it to over TPB much easier. Believe me, if they could track who you were sharing it with in real life, I'm sure they would.
 
Hasn't music reached a stage where all the good stuff that can be done - has been done?

Have to agree with whoever said about music getting worse in recent years. Most the stuff on the radio now is in my head for 2 weeks or so, then I forget about it, but I still hum some of John William's stuff from a while back.
 
Maybe I'm the exception that proves the rule. I always look for somewhere to download any music before I even consider buying it, but I don't do it often and I don't share things.

I also have only ever bought one music track online, costing 98p, from MSN music when it was just starting.
 
By definition, what is 'sharing'', does it basically mean lending a movie to a mate for a couple of days? Or does it mean to lend a movie to a mate for a couple of days so he can burn it onto a disc to give to his cousin.
 
Breaking news: People who actually like music are the ones who "pirate" it. *shock* Who could have seen that coming?!

Bro Mike hit the nail on the head right there. EMI can go shove picket fences up their gaping assholes for all I care. Sheep only ever bought albums they put out because it had that one or two songs that they like, you know that one song? That song's so good. Well, now they can get that one song for 5% of the price of an album... holy shit guys! We're losing money! It must be the pirates who never bought our music to begin with!

I'm a commie faggot, I don't believe in art being capitalised on. Oh sure, it would be great if everyone could make a living off of their art, but the reality is that a few make more money than anyone should and everyone else makes nothing. I don't pay for music because I'm not going to give pocket change to rich assholes (ie. the assholes who run record companies stealing profit from the artists that we would like our money going to), and 95% of the artists that I actually care about don't and can't make a living off their music in the first place.
 
There are a few things that are missing from the record labels' information here. The big one is how are they measuring sales? Are "record sales" only for whole albums? How do you log the legal download purchase of a single song?

For years the record industry has packaged music like this:

Track List:

  1. Shit
  2. Crap
  3. Tripe
  4. More crap
  5. OMG THE GREATEST SINGLE EVER!
  6. Shit sandwich
  7. Aural rape
  8. Shit-on-a-stick
  9. Chocolate-dipped crapcicle
  10. Drivel
  11. Rubbish
  12. Garbage (actually I like them)
This is how records were sold. One good single would move an entire album of junk simply because people didn't have a choice. The consumer got wise and started turning to P2P to get just the one song they liked; it may be piracy, but paying $23 for one track is idiotic. Sales are still low because we can now pick and choose the songs we want instead of having to buy an entire album.

I know that P2P sharing and torrents have introduced me to some great new music, none of which I would have found in my local store. I don't think these suits are just about networks dropping sales, it's about market share. Record companies carved up the world and release different artists in different regions. The networks have no borders, so I can download obscure Russian Polkas or Swedish Metal that I could never have found in this country. Digital music sales don't require the infrastructure to press albums or burn disks. With today's technology an artist can rent studio time and hire an engineer to mix his recordings and sell them directly online. No record company need apply, and the artist gets to keep what he makes.

This is about controlling exposure and information. I download, but I also purchase.

Example:
Someone downloaded and burned a CD, and left it on my friend's boat. He asked if I wanted it before he threw it out. What the hell? Let's see if there's anything interesting.
I loved it.
I bought three albums (and just purchased the fourth yesterday at the online release)
I shared the music with my dad, who also bought three albums and two concert tickets.
I then bought two concert tickets.

And to think, if someone hadn't burned a bootleg I would have no idea this guys existed because they are a smaller band and are not signed with any RIAA labels. That is what steams the RIAA, lost market share and lost control.
 
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