Legal Music Downloads At 35%, Soon To Pass Piracy

bonch writes "Entertainment Media Research released a study stating that 35% of music listeners are using legal download services, and that the percentage will soon surpass illegal downloads, currently at 40%. Slashdot has also previously reported on services like iTunes gaining in popularity over P2P services. "The findings indicate that the music industry is approaching a strategic milestone with the population of legal downloaders close to exceeding that of pirates," said Entertainment Media Research chief executive Russell Hart.'"

Comments

so?

[Anonymous Coward]

so what's the other 25%?

I'm not surprised

[Spytap]

It's just damn easier than dealing with all the shit from stealing.
A buck a song? Genius.

Re:I'm not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

$1 for a compressed and crippled music file that is not truly mine works out to roughly $15 for an album. Insanity.

Which works out to... about the same as buying the CD. That's insane? To not compete with themselves?

Then throw in the common argument that "There's only 1 or 2 good songs on the album. Why should I pay for the rest?" and your $15 just became $2.

$2 for the good songs in a limitted format with all the convenience of home downloading.
$15 for the good songs in an uncompressed format on semi-permanent, portable media with extras like song lyrics and roughly 10 other songs.
Take your pick.

Still a little bit expensive

[Dancin_Santa]

For something as ethereal as bits on a platter, it hardly seems worth it to pay USD1.00 for a song. If I buy a CD for USD15.00, I get about 15 songs, so the price of the music is the same, and in addition I also get a nice case and a physical disk and liner notes.

I would probably start subscribing to these "legal" music download sites if they were to stop gouging the buyers. Until then, I'll support my favorite bands by giving away samples of their music to my friends and buying t-shirts at their concerts.

Re:Still a little bit expensive

[MyLongNickName]

For something as ethereal as bits on a platter, it hardly seems worth it to pay USD1.00

I will sell you 100 gigabits for only 0.25 cents!

Ofcourse, it will be random 1's and 0's with an occasional Goatse thrown in.

You are not buying bits. You are buying someone's creativity. If you don't think it is worth it DON'T BUY! No one sticks a gun to your head and says "buy it".

Re:Still a little bit expensive

[Nasarius]

Well, most full albums on iTunes are US $9.99. You don't often see physical CDs that cheap.

Check out your local independent shop that buys/sells used CDs.

Re:Still a little bit expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why I buy vinyl records. Then I get the actual sound wave cut into a platter.

Re:Still a little bit expensive

[paulbd]

sorry, but you, along with so many other people, just don't understand how the music industry works.

while it is true that record company executives do make out like fat cats, their income as a proportion of the overall revenue streams within the industry is small.

the music industry, that is, the traditional music industry, is an exercise in massive cross-subsidy. That mega-hit by that obnoxious and relatively talent-free sex-toy-girl-thing? It helped pay for dozens of minor releases that will likely lose money. Occasionally, a genuinely talented artist will make a record that for some reason sells a lot of copies (the Koln concert release by Keith Jarrett is always a favorite example), but even then, that success makes it possible for the iconoclastic label it was on (ECM) to release dozens of CD's that cost them money.

until you get this model into your head, no suggestions for an alternative system will make much sense. i say this as someone who attempted to set up a new label, released 1 CD by an incredibly talented group, and began to realize how it all works.

Re:Still a little bit expensive

[EzInKy]

For something as ethereal as bits on a platter, it hardly seems worth it to pay USD1.00 for a song.


That really is the big story here, isn't it. Ox07 is a just a number. 0x08 is another. String the two together and you get just a bigger number, 0x0708. In reality what you are actually paying for when buy digital music is the "right" to use big numbers that happen to resemble songs when processed by certain programs.

Re:Still a little bit expensive

[paulbd]

true, to a point.

however: the most expensive part of making a financially successful recording is marketing.

unless you are making wildly popular music in a style already well-represented in the marketplace, getting the existence of you music out to other people costs way more than actually making it (given the reduction in production costs that you mentioned). its a difficult job, and for a lot of music, its a long term, part time effort.

one of the big problems that musicians have to deal with at the moment is major oversupply of talent. there are a huge number of musicians around now who are at least as talented and making at least as "good" music (whatever that means) as the early progenitors of rock'n'roll, jazz and so forth. there is no way that all these skilled people will get to tap into a revenue stream in the way that the (relatively) few artists at the start of recorded popular music did. as a result, marketing is key, and is going to be an uphill battle for the foreseeable future.

and please, lets not have /. posters prattle on about guerilla marketing. it works for a few cases. its not going to work (and has not worked) for *most* of the artists (for example) on CDbaby.

Re:Still a little bit expensive

[BackInIraq]

For something as ethereal as bits on a platter, it hardly seems worth it to pay USD1.00 for a song.

Complain about low bitrates if you want, but give me a break on the whole "bits on a platter" thing. What the hell do you think a CD is?

That, and for some reason I've had better luck preserving MP3s than actual CDs over the last 8 years or so...maybe I'm careless, but I've lost a lot more music to damage on physical CD's than I've lost to data loss on my hard drive. In fact, I have yet to lost any MP3s whatsoever. Largely because it takes a lot less blank CD's (which cost both in space and money) to backup my music, even at my usual 224k-256k, when they're compressed. And compact disks are just not a great medium when it comes to longevity, at least if you want to take them out and listen to them. Especially in places like cars.

That said, no I've not bought a single album as an online album...for 3-5 extra bucks I'll go ahead and grab the disc (and promptly rip it at more than 128k). But I've bought plenty of songs, and when you figure I'm saving 13-15 bucks an album (because if I'm buying a one or two songs it's likely because I don't _want_ the rest of the album) by buying those songs, at USD 1.00 they're an absolute steal.

Re:Still a little bit expensive

[Sam Ritchie]

Hmm. Following that logic, would you suggest that if all record companies ceased spending money on marketing, people would stop buying music because they didn't know it existed?

I suspect that one day there will be viable alternate channels for musicians to get their music to consumers; be it through automated peer-to-peer referrals, targeted music review subscription sevices, or mechanisms that no-one's thought of yet. It won't replace record companies paying radio stations for rotation, it won't equalise artist remuneration so that no-one earns millions and everyone makes a living, but I think it will make an impact.

Re:Still a little bit expensive

[MightyYar]

one of the big problems that musicians have to deal with at the moment is major oversupply of talent. there are a huge number of musicians around now who are at least as talented and making at least as "good" music (whatever that means) as the early progenitors of rock'n'roll, jazz and so forth.

Wow, you've hit the nail on the head as to why I don't care about the fate of the record companies. Can you tell me what value they are adding when I literally run into bands that are just as talented as the best they are selling?

Re:Still a little bit expensive

[RichardX]

Doesn't really help all that much.
Carbon is just an atom. So is hydrogen. Bit of this, but of that and you've got yourself a molecule. Few molecules here, few molecules there, and you've got yourself a Mercedes.

You still get nicked for taking one without paying though, and I don't think the charges are any less for running off with a "big pile of atoms" rather than a Merc.

Before anyone starts on about it btw, I know copyright infringment is not the same as stealing/theft - I'm not intending to make that comparison. I'm simply pointing out that you can't really equate "any old big number" with "this specific bit of music" any more than you can equate "any old big pile of atoms" with "this specific car".
The important bit in both cases is not the digits or atoms, it's the order they're arranged in, that's what you're paying for.

Re:Maybe I'm missing something here...

[niteskunk]

Not downloading at all.

Wishful Thinking

[Ratso Baggins]

Unless people are downloading gigs from ITMS etc. - daily - then I can't see how this is anything more than wishful thinking (or reverse FUD?)

Music Exec

[puppet10]

Time to jack up the license fees on legal downloads!!! We'll make a killing at $4 a song!!

Just playing catch-up

[tyagiUK]

Given the level of integration between something like iTunes and my iPod, it is much easier (for me) to browse, pay, and download, music, rather than search for and obtain an uncontrolled copy.

Provided you've got the cash means to do it, there's not really any excuse for not using "officially sanctioned", paid-for, download sources.

All we've seen is the industry playing catch-up with a technology which took off much faster than they were able to keep up with.

Re: Just playing catch-up

[Black Parrot]

> Given the level of integration between something like iTunes and my iPod, it is much easier (for me) to browse, pay, and download, music, rather than search for and obtain an uncontrolled copy.

I think slashdotters have been saying for years that the problem was the music industry's (non existant) business model, and if they would make it cheap enough to download a song, people would pay for it.

Also, presumably the % piracy is a function of the price, and the goal of the music industry will be to maximize (number_of_downloads * price_each).

Of course, they could virtually eliminate piracy by pushing the price toward zero, but that's probably not what maximizes profit.

Re:Just playing catch-up

[Mr2001]

Given the level of integration between something like iTunes and my iPod, it is much easier (for me) to browse, pay, and download, music, rather than search for and obtain an uncontrolled copy.

That's because you own an iPod. For someone like me, who only owns MP3 players and doesn't want to take part in Apple's vendor lock-in scheme, iTMS is quite a bit more hassle.

Re: Just playing catch-up

[Black Parrot]

Also, presumably the % piracy is a function of the price, and the goal of the music industry will be to maximize (number_of_downloads * price_each).

Which, BTW, suggests that RSN we'll see a hamfisted attempt at DRM-based region coding for music downloads, so that they can optimized that formula independently for the different economic regions of the planet.

Re:something's not adding up

[DanteLysin]

illegal downloads
legal downloads
not downloading?

Some people do buy CD's at a store. ;)

VHS Tapes

[Ken Broadfoot]

People buy them, people illegally record on them too. So what? I think that the industry is happy with the fact that people are legally downloading stuff and now they should stop all the whining about the the other folks who don't, and get over it.

You would think something like the VHS tape would destroy the movie industry. Just like downloading music has destroyed the music industry.

Err.... wait a minute... it didn't!

and

[Turn-X Alphonse]

And the RIAA will claim the drop is due to them sueing everyone.

Apple will claim iPods and iTunes did it.

Microsoft will some how claim they did something to help with Windows Media Player.

Then more figures will come out saying the opposit and all statements will be withdrawn and more people sued.

Music LISTENERS not DOWNLOADERS

[InfiniteWisdom]

So of the people who listen to music, 25% don't download legally or illegally and purchase CDs or tapes or whatever.

Now I'd imagine all categories overlap... I'm sure a LOT of people buy some CDs, download others legally and also download illegal copies every now and then. So I don't know how those are accounted for.

Bogus statistics: what little we can conclude

[G4from128k]

This is a classic example of bogus statistics. The two figures have absolutely nothing to do with each other. The 30% of people using legal downloads might be mutually exclusive or totally overlapping with the 40% that use illegal downloads. The numbers need not total to 100% (and could total to more than 100%). At best we can conclude:

1. No greater than 70% of music listeners download music (legal or illegal) -- i.e., as much as 30% of music listeners simply don't download music.
2. No fewer than 40% of music listeners download music (legal or illegal).
3. At most, 30% use both legal and illegal downloads.
4. It's possible (based on this limited data) that no one does both illegal and legal downloading.

In next month's survey, both numbers could go up or down since the survey does not ask "do you ONLY download music from legal/ illegal sources." Moreover, the survey provides no estimates of volumes -- illegal downloaders could be downloading 10X or 10X less than their legal-downloading counterparts. Or people that download legal music could be the biggest "pirates" and this survey would be none the wiser.

Re:Bogus statistics: what little we can conclude

[RickPartin]

Statistics are usually nothing more than a marketing tool. They are simple and get a point across easily. But nothing is ever that simple. So many variables are in there like who paid for the study, how was it done, etc. But this never matters because once the statistic is out there everyone repeats it and the number becomes fact.

Re:Two important distinctions

[gorfie]

I have downloaded legally and found DRM a pain in the ass, and continue to get my shite from P2P and allofmp3.com.

I've been thinking about going to a legal downloading service but I hang back because I fear that the restrictions and proprietary formats will prevent me from...

1.) Burning unlimited audio CDs for the car
2.) Burning unlimited mp3 CDs for work
3.) Buying any third party hardware player for the files I get from the service

That's basically it... I want to be able to listen to a song I buy from home, in the car, and at work without requiring a specific player or proprietary software (I use a zero footprint mp3 player on my work pc).

Is that possible with any of the legal services? I'd pay $1 per song...

What if we treat it like licensing... if I buy a tune in the proprietary format and then download that same tune in mp3 format, is that really wrong/illegal? Would they really sue me if I could document that I owned each song I downloaded? I rationalized downloading Pearl Jam's Ten a few months back because my CD (bought in 92 I think) is so scratched up that I can't get a digital rip anymore.

Thoughts?

Re:Read closely

[Rostin]

I think it's a little ambiguous. We don't know how many legal downloaders have also downloaded music illegally. It could mean that 75% of music listeners download their music. It could also mean that only 40% do, or any value in between 40% and 75%.

It actually cuts 2 ways

[Anonymous Coward]

In your example, you are right. The downloader did nothing illegal in downloading the music.

However, the uploader most likely does not have the right to distribute the music, so it would be an illegal upload.

User buys from iTunes: Legal upload, Legal download
User hacks iTunes to download music for free: Legal upload, Illegal download
User downloads music he does not own from Kazaa: Illegal upload, Illegal download
User downloads music he owns from Kazaa: Illegal upload, Legal download (your example fits here)

Re:Sure...

[RickPartin]

I think pissing on their customers has become more of a hobby rather than a necessity to protect their money. Once you have an absolute monopoly what else is there to do? How can you top that? Might as well use the power for something.

Rip off + No easy means

[Ka D'Argo]

Now, I haven't read up on every payment method that iTunes and other online outlets provide, but when you combine the fact that CD's still cost $12+ on average with the fact that credit card purchasing doesn't leave some of us alot of options.

I haven't bought a CD in years, the prices are just too high. On average you're looking at $12 to $15 for a 10 track CD. On average I enjoy a few songs, between 2-3, on each CD. Sure nowadays, you can purchase songs individually online. But what about people that have bad credit? Or no credit card at all? Or those that don't trust online outlets with their information? I know plenty of people who thanks to spyware and such do not trust any browser or "secure" method of online purchasing cause there is no 100% guarantee.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: they need custom kiosks that can custom burn CD's for price of each song. You go into a store or the mall, and go up to a little kiosk. You pick out which songs you want, and pay for each song. A system then burns you a CD, with those songs on it, and you pay like any other method (cash, check, etc). Until then can come up with a widescale format for releasing CD's, kind of like "singles", with the songs YOU want, people will "pirate". Costs are cheap. CD's cost like a penny to produce blank, probably less. A simple GUI running on a touch screen LCD can be setup so a user can simply go through an A - Z search for song/artist and there are plenty of programs that can be modified to autoburn apon being told so.

But will the RIAA/MPAA stop bitching?

[shmlco]

I'm sure that if you looked at it from their side, you'd see that they consider the increase in legal downloads to be the direct result of their bitching.... ;)

so what's the other 25%?

[antiphoton]

so what's the other 25%?

The profit the RIAA makes via out of court settlements.

It's a LIttle Late

[illectro]

This is little consolation for the plethora of legal music services which tried to get licenses from the music industry for years before closing up shop. Companies like eMusic, MyPlay and even Napster (after the first legal challenges) tried to legally sell music online years before Apple was showered with awards for it's 'innovative' music store. Many of the product and marketing staff at apple come from these companies, the tech staff who actually developed the technology pretty much got stiffed.

See? See! You CAN compete with free!

[werdna]

Give people what they want, and they will come. Free is nice, but nice is better! People want convenience, quality and convenience, and will pay for that.

RIAA couldn't deliver the promise of the tech with their business model, so they instead tried to shut down the tech. Hopefully, SCOTUS won't permit that, and we'll know soon enough.

Meanwhile, let it be remembered, you CAN compete with free.

Rumor-mongering

[tm2b]

You're going to have to back that claim up. The rumor keeps going around, and Apple keeps denying it.

I don't doubt the price will go up one day, but not soon and not to the degree that you suggest.

Re:Also...

[muszek]

... and out of those 35 mln Brits they pulled a group of 10 people. 3 of them said "sure, I bought some music". One of them was asleep at the time of questioning, so they counted him as half. The result: 35% of people buy music.

Seriously: That's what I've been saying in parent post: they get some shitty, non-representative data and try to generalise based on that. It's not only non-representative - it seems to favor "legal" music - UK is generally rich and it has long traditions in music (which probably co-relates with people being more willing to purchase recordings), etc., etc.

I've heard that those researchers are going to Nigeria to prove that 95% of the World's population is black.

DRM forces you to download

[gyst]

You know the music industry's business model is seriously flawed when, after buying the new Coldplay CD, you find out you can't play it on your workstation. Copy protected.

So I'm actually forced to pirate the songs I just bought to be able to listen to them at work.

This communicates a clear message: buying will be punished by DRM restrictions, you'd better download.

Now this is interesting...

[Khyber]

I meantioned in previous comments that piracy was what several bands noted as being their gateway to fortune and fame (and not by winning in court, either.) I have to wonder if perhaps all this current piracy is responsible for the current rise in legal downloads.

On a side note, I doubt this is going to stop **AA from wielding their mighty soylent green sword against anyone. After all, once a bully, always a bully.

Re:Sure...

[Ubergrendle]

No, but it sounds like its time to raise prices. They'll argue you're paying a premium to recover piracy costs + for the convenience.

Re:i dont buy it

[saddino]

I'm exactly the opposite; everyone I know buys music legally from online services. Many of them used to get music illegally back in the Napster days, but not anymore.

You have to remember that these statistics are based over the entire population, so in fact, your friends (I'm assuming you're much younger than I am) may in fact rarely pay for legal music downloads, but my friends do, and thus "counter" yours.

It would be interesting to see how this statistic breaks down over age group.