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Video and Software Downloads Overtaking Music

Posted by michael on from the leaching-for-fun-and-profit dept.

Trigun writes "The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is reporting that movie and software downloads have outpaced music downloads. Music accounted for 48.6 percent of files shared online, compared with 62.5 percent in 2002, according to a report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The article says that 1 in 4 internet users have downloaded at least one movie, and attributes the proliferation to access to broadband. Maybe we've just downloaded all the good music already?"

32 of 234 comments (clear)

  1. Global coverage by SIGALRM · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Across the OECD's 30 industrialized member countries, music accounted for 48.6 percent of files shared online, compared with 62.5 percent in 2002, according to excerpts of the report seen by The Associated Press.
    Interesting. I wonder if the fact that Hollywood tends to distribute movies in the US first--coupled with the storm of global entertainment coverage--contributes to this? If I lived in Germany, for example, awaiting the release of Spider-Man 2 I might want to see what all the hype was about and download the movie.
    --
    Sigs cause cancer.
    1. Re:Global coverage by Dark+Kenshin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Actually, I think this is due to the fact that the recent quality of music being released isn't that high. This gives movies and programs more focus for people to spend time downloading.

      But that's just my opinion, so whatever ...

      --
      "I only know 2 things: The love for me, and the fear of me."
    2. Re:Global coverage by WatertonMan · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I honestly wonder how they calculate this? I daresay that the majority of people using P2P networks share their music shares which probably are around 1000 files or more. I just have a hard time seeing that most are sharing that many movies and pieces of software. i.e. those sharing movies almost certainly are also sharing songs.

      What I suspect they did is just scanned for not music files. They then end up with all these small files - sometimes the content of you system directory - that dumbnits share or people trying to get a certain GB shared limit share. Yet if they count each .ini file and other such thing as a different software file, of course the number of files will outnumber music. But is that a real accurate count of movies and software shared?

      i.e. shouldn't they count software packages and movies shared rather than *files* shared?

      Perhaps they aren't making this mistake. But given their statistics something just smells fishy. I'd like to see their methadology.

    3. Re:Global coverage by DrEldarion · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'd attribute it more to the combination of more people getting broadband (they can now download huge files in a matter of hours), many legal threats (while the RIAA lawsuits may not have affected downloading, I'm sure many people don't share as much music anymore), and a bunch of legal MP3 download services popping up (if people are buying them legally, there's no point in sharing them on P2P networks).

      Remember, just because YOU don't like the music they put out nowadays doesn't mean that there aren't hundreds of millions of people who do.

    4. Re:Global coverage by superpulpsicle · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Man I so agree. The numbers aren't that obvious. You download a movie, it's 600 megs. It messed up at 300 megs. You recontinued to P2P session, does that count as 2 files now?

      It's goes on and on. I can't stand research like this anymore. They are just giving organizations like RIAA fuel to sue by miscalculating left and right.

    5. Re:Global coverage by Mad+Martigan · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That's a good point, considering the article addresses the number of files downloaded. I wonder what things would look like if the numbers reflected the size of the files downloaded.

      Also, if they did scan specifically for movies, software, etc, I wonder how porn messes things up. I mean, seriously, how many movie movies have you downloaded compared to how many porno clips/movies?

      It's too bad there isn't a better discussion of the methodolgy in the article.

      --
      ... turning to the 3-D map, we see an unmistakable con
  2. Bah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They probably calculated it by megabytes.

  3. its faster.. by cRueLio · · Score: 5, Insightful

    its faster and easier for me to DL a movie off of IRC than to haul my ass to the movie theatre, stand in line, and sit cramped in a shitty chair with no elbow room next to some annoying little kids. i just dl from irc, burn on a cdrw (vcd/svcd) pop it in the vcd player and watch it.

    --
    Investing forum
    1. Re:its faster.. by vxvxvxvx · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sure, but when you go to a movie theater

      • The screen doesn't shake
      • The audio doesn't remind you of AM talk
      • You can actually see who is talking rather than "the white blob"
      • Your girlfriend doesn't leave 10 minutes in after calling you a loser

      All in all, I'd go to the theater.

    2. Re:its faster.. by neonstz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I saw Spider-Man 2 with 6 friends yesterday. Ordeded the tickets online two days in advance on the internet (paid with VISA). I didn't have to stand in line, I just went straight to the counter to pick up the tickets 5 minutes before the movie started. Before the movie a few of us got something to eat, and after the movie we went out to have a couple of beers/coke. Watching a movie at the cinema isn't just the movie, it's also about getting out and doing stuff with friends.

  4. Blame ' pirates ' by nurb432 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That way we can have more restrictive legislation.

    --
    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
  5. Its the RIAAs secret plan by AuMatar · · Score: 5, Funny

    Keep coming out with music so shitty noone wants to download it! And its working already!

    On a serious note- do they separate legal from illegal downloads? Lots of movies/software is legal to download.

    --
    I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
  6. What do they call movies by Mik3D · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sure if you include Quicktime trailers, and short films. But I seriously doubt 1 in 4 have downloaded a feature film... cause guess what, no where near 1 in 4 users has broadband

  7. Of course... by UnixRawks · · Score: 4, Funny

    Pr0n baby pr0n. It's much better than pr0ngroove mp3's.

    --
    I
    1. Re:Of course... by Mind+Booster+Noori · · Score: 4, Informative
      I don't really know what was your intention when you posted this, but I've seen this moderated as Score:0 and Score:2...

      You have a point here: probably the most kind of downloaded "movies" (which I suppose they call to everything with certain extensions, like .avi, .mpeg, ...) is porn, and with the expansion of p2p file-sharing networks and broadband, more and more people probably download porn stuff there, I even imagine lot's of teens using p2p software only for that purpose...

      --
      Mind Booster Noori
  8. Maybe if by size... by Xshare · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Are they counting by size of file? Or maybe they are including all the .r00, .r01, .r02 files as SEPERATE files, but I don't see this as completely right.

  9. RIAA spin by carlos_benj · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Great. I'm sure RIAA will see this as vindication of their sue the customer policies. "See, they've moved on to other media since we started..."

    --

    --

    As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.

  10. Surprise, surprise... by stienman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What the RIAA is doing is having a chilling effect on online music trading, like it or not. I don't think the MPAA will have any recourse but to pursue the same tactics, but with much larger penalties.

    It would be nice to see the full stats, though, to see if music has plateaued (as would be expected) while movies climb as broadband proliferates.
    br. -Adam

    1. Re:Surprise, surprise... by Mind+Booster+Noori · · Score: 3, Interesting
      What the RIAA is doing is having a chilling effect on online music trading, like it or not.
      Of course is having: lot's of people (including me) are buying LESS CD's because some of them are with copy protections that doesn't let people play them on their CD players.

      Wow, nice move.

      --
      Mind Booster Noori
  11. Re:Same old story by Neil+Blender · · Score: 3, Insightful

    infringing on our rights as citizens

    Downloading stuff is not a right. It's a privilege.

  12. MPAA not exactly impartial by NachoDaddy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A separate global study published Thursday by the Motion Pictures Association found that about one in four Internet users had already downloaded a movie. Most said they would pirate more if they took less time to download.

    The problem is right there.

  13. oh the humanity! by kgarcia · · Score: 5, Insightful

    *sigh* So, one in four internet users worldwide have downloaded movies online.

    oh wait, no it was only in Eight Countires...

    oh, and only broadband users were polled.

    ooh! and I almost forgot, of those that answered, one in four said they had downloaded at least one (YES, ONE) movie...

    nothing to see here... just FUD and paranoia...

  14. Sales down because of bad customers or bad music? by mroch · · Score: 3, Interesting

    In my opinion, if CD sales are in fact down (hard to tell), it's due to the lack of good music rather than file sharing. I don't buy CDs anymore, but that's not because I can download everything. It's because everything out now sucks. Like the post said, maybe we have all the good music already... If the record companies spent their money making really good music like they used to, rather than their new tactic of suing their customers, I'm sure CD sales would go back up.

  15. Music down by volume or percentage? by DdJ · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is music swapping down by actual volume, or just by percentage? That is, are people swapping less music, or did video/software swapping just grow faster than music swapping did?

    If music swapping is actually down, could it be because there are viable legit music download services now? I know I've bought multiple albums from both iTMS and Audi Lunchbox myself...

  16. This is jacked in so many ways by Unnngh! · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Seriously, this is the most poorly written article I have ever read. Check out these gems:

    Video accounted for 27 percent, up from 25.2 percent, the study will say.

    So, movie downloads didn't really increase much.

    The OECD report does not give separate numbers for pirated downloads and those that do not infringe copyright

    I'm not even going to start on this one.

    The biggest growth in downloading last year was in "other files" - neither music nor film - which almost doubled their share to about a quarter of all downloads. The category includes software and pornography, but the report gives no breakdown between the two.

    Basically, they're saying they have a lot of data and it seems to indicate something, but they can't really say what, so they just threw out some numbers. Nice work, OECD.

  17. I wonder.. by RyLaN · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I wonder if they're measuring traffic from Debian's apt mirrors, RedHat's up2date, Gentoo's emerge... I know that just between the 4 Debian systems I run there can be anywhere from 100-300 megabytes of updates per week. Granted, one is stable, two are testing and one is unstable. But still, I can't think of a week that I've *ever* downloaded 300 megs of music. Most software packages are much, much larger than even an entire album, so this doesn't surprise me at all.

    --
    At least the war on the environment is going well
  18. here's some legit P2P music downloads for you by MichaelCrawford · · Score: 3, Informative
    Bit Torrent was in general developed to ease p2p sharing of legit material.

    --
    Request your free CD of my piano music.
  19. funny thing is.... by thegoogler · · Score: 5, Funny

    my MOTHER got me started on downloading movies, she said "o is that new denzel washington movie, ya the the man on fire one out yet?" and i said no. so then she said "well i one of my friends said there kids are downloading movies, you have whatchamacallit broadband couldnt you do that" she pestered me untill i burned her a vcd. good job mom. set an example, on how to GET ME IN JAIL!

  20. From the article: by Kozar_The_Malignant · · Score: 3, Insightful
    The OECD report does not give separate numbers for pirated downloads and those that do not infringe copyright. Despite a growing number of paid-for services like Apple's music site iTunes, however, experts say the vast majority of file swaps are still unauthorized.

    The biggest growth in downloading last year was in "other files" - neither music nor film - which almost doubled their share to about a quarter of all downloads. The category includes software and pornography, but the report gives no breakdown between the two.
    So, no breakdown of how much is actually illegal, just "experts say." I wonder how much of "other files" is accounted for by bloated Microsoft critical updates, service releases and patches? How much is tasteful internet erotica? How about digital video of my daughter's college graduation sent to relatives?
    --
    Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
  21. Re:In-theater cameras by RyLaN · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yes, there is an extremely nice (not noticeably different from a dvd, except for faded colors) rip of Spider-Man 2 going around. *cough*friend got it*cough*.

    What's more interesting to me is the fact that thousands of people have grabbed this file from BitTorrent sites like this one that require a registration, valid email et all to join. They literally signed up, and had their IP addy registered into a database of 'trusted ips', so that they could download Spider-Man 2. Simply Astonishing. I've seen 4 or 5 of these sites that appear to be using the same code, it wouldn't take the MPAA more than 30 seconds to start another one and start nabbing people IN THE ACT. Not to mention the fact that all the connected IP Addresses are visible from the tracker page..

    --
    At least the war on the environment is going well
  22. Blame broadband? by bigberk · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Broadband definitely makes it easier to download large amounts of data... but when I recall my own history, I was downloading a heluvalot more music in the days when 56 kbps modems first appeared. Back then it was an exploration of all the good music that's out there and that I had never heard before. Suddenly it all became available, waiting only 15 minutes or so for a download. For years I have felt that I have all the 'classics' in my private MP3 collection, and I don't often seek new music. When it comes to mainstream pop I certainly have 'heard it all before' and crave nothing.

    So if "the industry" doesn't produce any new music that is worth craving, people don't download or buy it.

  23. Re:legal mp3 downloads vs P2P by 1arkhaine · · Score: 3, Interesting

    He didn't *Have* to, but I can understand where he is coming from. As an Australian, I have *no way* of getting the Pixies latest song, other than by illegal downloading. While I haven't done so, there is hardly any reason for me not to now, is there?