Well, well, well, look what we have here. A new study shows that people who download music illegally are more likely to buy music than their non-pirating counterparts. Why’s that? It turns out that people who are into downloading music are actually into music, whereas people who don’t download music aren’t necessarily fans of music in general.
In hard numbers, people who download music spend an average of £77 (around $126) per year on music, versus the non-downloaders coming in an £44 ($72).
So yes, people who illegally download music are the music industry’s biggest consumer. Imagine that.
The survey, which took place in the UK (obviously) and was commissioned by think-tank Demos and carried out by Ipsos Mori, looked at 1,000 16-to-50-year olds.
Ten percent of respondents admitted to illegally downloading music.
All of this brings into question the UK Government’s plan to knock illegally downloaders off the Internet, done, of course, in order to protect the rights of musicians and, more cynically, prop up the ailing music business.
That is bullshit i know schools full of 16-22 years who don’t pay a damn dime regarding music.
I can name many people who have not purchased music since 2004
What backs up this study; what is the margin of error they could have been many who just said they brought music did they look at or ask for receipts or just went by whatever people said ?
Of course, your study is more thorough than Ipsos Mori.
The music industry, as we knew it from the 50’s through the mid-90’s, as a business model is DEAD. Wishing for a return to fat-cat record label days and suing individuals who download music will NOT stem the tide. The internet was designed to survive a nuclear war, which means that the channel of transimission is nearly impervious to interruption.
So what are we going to do? The ‘industry’ hates the fact that it is no longer needed, that artists can, vis a vis Radiohead’s experiment with In Rainbows, appeal directly to consumers. And, to be frank, I’m thoroughly unconvinced that the RIAA EVER had the interest of artists in mind. They only see their ever-shrinking meal ticket dwindling in the distance.
Artists are the ones who deserve support, and we need to find ways to appropriately compensate them for their hard, creative work. I do not, however, need to shell out enough dollars so that Master P can afford to buy his son an island in the Caribbean for his birthday (*South Park reference.)
I don’t have the answers, personally, other than people, all concerned, need to act with a bit more integrity and a bit less “I DESERVE this.” Consumers do NOT ‘deserve’ free music, this is stealing. Artists do not ‘DESERVE’ what THEY think their music is worth, it is for the market to decide. And the RIAA doesn’t DESERVE anything, as far as I can tell.
So, maybe if we get people to support artists because it’s the right thing to do, rather than out of fear (that has worked so well, historically) and artists realize that not everything they turn out is even worth a buck a song, we’ll start getting some where. But if we expect to regulate the situation by regulating technology and enforcing the regulation with litigation, well. Lose-Lose-Lose.
True that sir.
great comment
+1
haven’t bought an album, physical or digital, in 10 years and the last one i bought was used.
When the RIAA started suing, I stopped buying. Have never purchased a CD since.
Misleading conclusion though.
The more fitting conclusion would be:
“People who are more into music are more likely to consume music, either by downloading it or actually buying it”.
They aren’t buying more music because they download, they do both because they’re into music.
About the debate: as a full time musician since 10 years back, I can assure you that filesharing hurts the business. Whatever you might think of record companies (even though I doubt any of you have any real experience with one), as a musician the record companies are what makes it possible for us to even work in the music business.
A record company is the cash injection needed for creating, recording, distributing and marketing your music to reach out to new listeners.
Sure NIN and Radiohead have great solustions…but it’s not really that hard doing something like that when you already have a 20 year long career on the top level of the music business, and hence doesn’t really need the financial backing of a record company.
There’s always this talk about the record companies being “evil”, but in the end they’re only trying to protect a product that they financed. As would any other company in the world.
If Toyota started making a car called the Ford Mustang, that looked exactly like the real Ford Mustang….would you say then that Ford are “evil” for trying to protect their brand or patent? Should we say that Ford should blame themselves?
Also, this Robin Hood mentality is extremely pathetic. Claiming that you download because of any other reason that it’s free and easy is ridiculous.
You want to download things for free, because then you don’t have to pay for it. It’s a blind egoistic act that doesn’t take into account that people actually pay massive amounts of money and time to create what you feel should be yours for free.
Hopefully the next generation won’t be full of egoistic parasites.
I work in the industries.
I agree with the first half of this comment, not sure about the sensationalist ending…
The industries are very complex and over the years record labels and publishing organizations have worked hard to cultivate their large incomes, they’ve put in place many laws and ridiculous contracts (reference the 4 page contract standard of 1940’s musicians who would record for 2 weeks and turn out 3 albums per year, the 100 page contracts of today including merch, pub, royalties, futures, options, cross-collateralisations, and new medias with 1 album per 1 or 2 years). Today’s market is hard to stomach for the big 4 because – taking a step back from the emotional side and direct associations, looking at the economics – the barriers to entry into the market have lowered without any proper industry recognised qualifications that might prop up the recording industries specialisms, whilst the market as a whole has moved from oligopoly towards monopolistic competition, where incomes are lower but generally more equal.
This translates to mean big labels won’t be as big, thus will be annoyed, but startups will be able to get a footing on their own and achieve a more reasonable success through a more liberal market:
equal opportunities for unequal rewards/work hard and you will benefit
This is absolutely true. Most of the people I know that download music are actual music fanatics. Meaning they may download that album, but you better believe they’re also buying records, live cds and concert tickets. There’s a level of check and balance that gets ignored simply because the Record companies are getting the crazy amounts of money their used to.
Who cares? The RIAA will just ignore this study and pretend it dosen’t exist, then continue to sue everyone and everything.
Milo and a few others need to realise that to get new listeners/fans you must communicate in such/whatever way feasible..
The internet is a communication TOOL with vast amount of services now.
and in reply with SFSJ, if they put in the elbow grease then the “i deserve this” phrase could be said lightly but still your music has to be good…