Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
But will the RIAA/MPAA stop bitching?
so what's the other 25%?
Apperently they have these things called "stores" that you can reach on sneakernet. Psh, it'll never catch on.
Time to jack up the license fees on legal downloads!!! We'll make a killing at $4 a song!!
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no, it means that 75% of music listeners download music.
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.
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... when Britney Spears appeared in those television ads telling me how wrong piracy was, and how it was stealing from artists like her.
I mean: "We hit a little bit of reality, hardcore, after the first three weeks. But we handled it fine, and now things are starting to go really smooth. Before we got married we were on tour, and we were just like kids, ordering room service, saying, 'Let's go out tonight. Then, all of a sudden, you have this home, you have the kids [Federline's children Kaleb and Kori], you have to get the diapers, get the dog to the vet. It's this reality. Like omigod, I have to tell the maid to buy diapers and get the pool boy to walk the dog? Can't I just make out with Kevin all the time? Being married sucks."
Poor girl... thank god the RIAA kept after the pirates who tried to rob her of her livelihood.
Seriously though, good to hear that online music is working, but it still sucks that 60% of that goes to RIAA liscensing levies.
Learn to read. It says 35% of MUSIC LISTENERS are paying for downloads, and 40% are downloading illegally. The other 25% is either buying albums at a store or listening to the radio. In other words... NOT DOWNLOADING!
You mean actually EMBRACING new technology that everyone is using, is actually BENEFICIAL? Wow, that is such a novel idea!
</sarcasm>
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
illegal downloads
;)
legal downloads
not downloading?
Some people do buy CD's at a store.
Maybe this should have been a Slashdot poll. 35% download legally, 40% download illegally and 25%:
- Rip from CD
- Breasts!
- Mentally reconstruct the music by "reading"
the grooves on an LP
- Record off the radio
- Rely on the voices in their head for all their entertainment
- Cowboy Neal
... the entire RIAA should be dragged out into the streets and paraded through town so we can jeer and throw rotten vegetables at them.
In fact, they should make a national holiday out of it. There can be a big parade... and thousands of vendors selling rotten vegetables. Yea. That's exactly how I dreamt it.
I am curious how this is measured. If an illegal downloader is being "measured" in this statistic, does that mean he/she is being "caught"? What about the silent masses illegally downloading music that is not measured?
The article says "35% of music consumers". Presumably, this means "all people who buy CDs" (or would buy CDs, if they weren't busy stealing the bread out of hungry record executive children's mouths).
This allows for overlap between the two groups; in fact, I'm guessing that the vast majority of online-music-buyers have also experimented with downloading.
If there is complete overlap, it would mean that 60% of music consumers have never downloaded music from the 'net. It would also mean that only 12.5% of illegal downloaders have not bought from iTunes or similar...
It would be interesting to see the actual numbers, and what questions they asked :-/
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
I am getting a response, and can see the site... Its at: http://www.hymn-project.org/
right?
If what you are reading sounds funny, or sarcastic, lame, or stupid
it is because it is supposed to be. just laugh
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.
Check out your local independent shop that buys/sells used CDs.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
- 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.
- No fewer than 40% of music listeners download music (legal or illegal).
- At most, 30% use both legal and illegal downloads.
- 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.Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Sites like http://www.audiolunchbox.com/ Magnatune, eMusic and mp3Tunes are one main reason why this trend is happening. NO DRM, Oggs and sometimes even FLAC - I'd say that is one major reason for the shift. Smaller sites with less mainstream content that let their users actually own the files unrestricted seem to finally be catching on. RIGHTON
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?
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.
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.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Actually "legal downloaders", not "legal downloads".
I just hate when people quote statistical data and have no clue about what they're doing. They usually re-interpret the data and reproduce the information that's either incomplete or false. False this time... 35% of people download music and it's kinda stupid to write that it relates somehow strictly to the number of downloads.
On average I probably buy around one bar of candy a week. If it was free (that's what pirated music is about, right?), I bet I'd eat more.
Sorry if it seems unimportant, I just kinda get pissed when negligence leads to misinformation.
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.
The music industry makes a ton on iTunes. When the songs were $1, they took about $0.80 of that. Now think: They didn't have to pay any distribution costs on that at all, most production costs are taken out of artists' royalties, and they generally made any remaning costs up on CD profits. iTunes money is basically pure profit for them.
And they forced a price hike.
Not too long ago they forced Apple up to $1.25 per song. It was their cut that went up, not Apple's. Apple really isn't making much, since they recognise it needs to be cheap to be widely accepted and they want to corner the market, plus it sells iPods which is where they really make money.
Even that, however, is better than what the record industry wanted: $3/song for popular songs.
So really, that is the kind of thought that goes through their heads. They think they should just be allowed to squeeze every last dime out of people. That's the whole reason they are so paranoid about copying of music. The more outrageous prices get, the more likely people are to copy things and the more morally justified they feel in doing it.
Why, In Soviet Russia, music downloads YOU!
> 75% of music listeners are using *A* download service
Nope.
If your reading of the article is correct, then there's no reason to exclude overlap between those group who download music. It might just as well be that 40% use illegal download services, and 87% of those also use legal download services, while 60% purchase media.
Something closer to that is certainly in line with anecdotal discussions with the people I happen to know.
But without more detail about how the study was conducted, it's tough to say anything meaningful.
Exactly what I'm trying to tell to ppl who aren't aware when buying music online.
Albums that provide you the freedom to do backups, to re-encode in whatever format/bitrate you want.
Buy a song that has DRM (most online music stores anyway) and which takes away the freedom that you had when buying an album. All that at a price more expensive than buying an album.
I know music stores will never consider selling music using a lossless codec without DRM but if I have to buy a whole album for a few songs that I want and be able to "tinker with", then so be it.
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.
I call BS on the survey and say it's a "we've already won" normalization propaganda campain. Telling "consumers" to shut up and be happy without the right to sample, share or even keep their music is what this is all about. The FUD and active warefare against file sharers will continue, but all of it is doomed to fail.
The whole DRM thing is going to backfire soon. People are not really going to be happy with these services when their devices start to fail. It's then they realize they have lost hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of music they thought they owned but were in fact renting. They will envious of people who took the time to translate the music they had to free formats on free systems. None of the FUD is true for music and media on these systems which lack both complicated, error proned DRM schemes and easy targets for the actively waged anti file scorched earth warfare. I've got my music, it's backed up, I can easily move it and I can play it on as many devices as I want. Apple may take care of people with ITunes but "Works for Sure" music boxes are sure to crap out and leave their users flat.
More importantly, there's still competition out there for the big three music publishers. Musicians don't like being screwed and know that's what they get from the cartels. The music industry killed mp3.com, but there are many other to take their place that will offer musicians and fans a much better deal. With Lessing creating an unambiguous legal framework, we can expect these services to be unassailable.
The concentration of power enjoyed by music publishers was a freak of history and will soon go away. People have been singing and dancing for each other throughout human history. I suspect someone will notice a chimp singing to it's young one day and that it sounds better than pop 40. Music copyrights and radio have only been around for 150 years or so. Government regulation of airwaves and music publication created the cartels in those 150 years. Many people have made money off the scheme, but the technology has been obsolete and the regulations overbearing for decades. Laws which keep Girl Scouts from singing around the fireplace are clearly out of line. Laws have gone from reasonable promotion of artistic work and sharing of public resources to blatant anti-competition tools, which thwart basic human desires. In ten years, we will look back on this madness and wonder how anyone dared keep people from singing to each other or sharing digital files.
Until then, visit places like Magnitune and sample the future.
$4.00 for a canned performance? You must be shitting me.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Yes, thanks to the industry's "messages" most people do have a sense that illegal downloads hurt musicians. But in fact it's the opposite. Most musicians don't make any money whatsoever from CD sales, because under a standard recording contract all the expenses of producing and distributing the little plastic discs get deducted from the musician's royalties, usually leaving nothing.
Musicians make a living playing live performances, just like they did for centuries before recording technology existed. What they get out of CD sales is exposure, which translates to bigger and better paying gigs. They get that exposure whether you pay for the copy or not. The important thing for the musician is that as many people as possible listen to the music, because a certain number of them will eventually buy concert tickets. Controlling people's ability to distribute copies benefits only the record companies, not the musicians.
Long-time musician Janis Ian wrote a couple very good articles explaining in detail how this works . Here's an excerpt:
Hey! Music industry! TAKE MY MONEY! PLEASE?
I would _happily_ pay $0.01 PER PLAY for songs I don't own yet, just to be able to listen to them. If you counted that money towards later purchase of that same song, all the better. (I.e. listen to a song 99 times, you own it.)
There are plenty of songs I'd like to just hear in their entirety once or twice, out of curiosity. I don't want to BUY them... but I'd be willing to pay a small amount for the privilege.
If only the oh-so-scared-of-piracy folks would learn that there are lots of people WILLING to part with their money for the right kinds of services...
- Peter
INsigNIFICANT
So 35% of music listeners are using legal download services but are they doing so exclusively?
It's all very well admitting to downloading, say, 10 legal tracks a month but are you going to admit to also downloading 100 illegal tracks per month from a P2P source.
Most people I know with iPods have a small percentage (if any) of legally paid for music while the rest of their collection is taken from file-sharing.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
2. Search Usenet, if it's not there request it.
3. Download it with an NNTP client or web browser.
4. Listen to it.
5. If you like it, buy the CD.
6. If you don't, delete it - it's not worth the hard disk space.
No spyware or nagware filesharing clients, pretty much untraceable unless someone goes through ISP logs & far superior download speeds to any P2P crap.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
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?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Correct, the money goes to the record label. That's why it's mainly the record companies, and not the artists complaining about piracy & p2p nets.
You're also on the right track about supporting artists - if you want to support your favourite artist, go to their gigs, buy their merchandise (the stuff that comes straight from them, I mean, not stuff put out by the label), or, heck, just send 'em money direct.
Quite frankly the business practices of most of the large labels are obscene. Even a lot of artists who you'd think did really well - had top 10 hits, etc - end up in massive debt to the labels.
Just off the top of my head, do you remember the female R&B trio, TLC? they were around in the early 90's. They had 3 back-to-back #1 hits, a debut album that sold over 4 million copies, and a follow up that sold over 10 million. They won grammys, topped the album charts for 5 weeks in the US, the only all female group to have more #1 US hits than TLC was The Supremes.
So.. they must be millionaires now, right? I mean, that kind of success would set you up for life, surely?
In fact, they filed for bankrupcy due to a £3 million debt they owed to their record company, and spent ages in legal battles trying to untangle themselves from their contracts.
And that's far from being an isolated incident.
Remember that the next time you hear an RIAA/record label representative sobbing about the plight of the poor starving musicians.
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
Putting aside the manufactured boy/girl band claptrap or record company puppet whores like Britney Shite, real musicians and bands generally alternate CD releases and concert tours (in order to promote those releases).
So, a band that is starting out after their first release probably gets a supporting slot on a tour with a more major artist - whereupon their set list is probably about 45 minutes long containing most of the songs from their first album and a few cover versions.
Go forward in time after three or four releases and that same band is probably headlining their own tour, playing most of the tracks of their latest CD release intersperesed with the "firm favourites" from their earlier CDs.
However, we're told by fans of legal music downloading is that they like downloading music because they no longer need to buy the entire CD but only the tracks they like.
Now, that's fine for the manufactured pap artists that only ever churn out plastic chart single music but where does it put the *real* musicians?
What onus will there be for real artists to go into a studio to record an entire album if the downloaders only like 3 or 4 of the tracks from that CD?
How does that affect a band's ability to play live, to create interesting and good set lists for live performance?
Believe me, there is nothing I hate more than buying a CD that contains two good songs and the rest being filler tracks but *real music* is about *albums*, not single tracks.
If I buy a CD by an artist then what I am getting is a *snapshot* of how that artist was feeling at the time, perhaps the emotions in the songs on that album are influenced by external events that happened to that artist. And if I *truly* enjoy the music of that artist then I'm going to take that into account when I listen to that particular CD.
What I'm really trying to say here is that I have albums in my collection that I deem as *classic* pieces of music but I probably play them maybe once or twice a year when I'm in the mood to play them - and at that point, I sit down in a comfortable chair in fromt of a good hi-fi and *do nothing else* but *listen* to that music.
So let's not equate iPods and MP3 players to *music appreciation* because they are mutually exclusive. I use an MP3 player full of my favourite tracks when I work out in the gym - but only because it gives my mind something to focus on (away from the pain of working out) and because it covers the pop crap blaring over the gym speakers - but I am *not* truly appreciating the music at that time.
Unfortunately, people who do *all* their music listening on portable players while doing something else and who do not buy entire albums will kill real music by real musicians that are appreciated by real music fans.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
They will envious of people who took the time to translate the music they had to free formats
... wala ... windoze DRM assumed it was a new computer and none of his songs would play.
I know one person just like this, who is your typical B&O / Vaio luser. He proudly announced to me that he had just finished converting all of his 800+ cds to....WMA.
I explained to him that this was not really a good idea, because one day these files might not play on a future version of Windows Media Player. I explained to him that he could download iTunes for free, and that he could use it to rip his collection into a format that he would be able to access 'forever'.
He will not do this for several reasons.
Firstly, I showed him that he was dumb, and that he wasted his time; he would not possibly be able to 'back down'. Secondly, he just spent weeks ripping his whole collection and is loath to do it all again.
There will, sadly, always be people who are stupid like this, and it will literally take the elimination of ALL of their music before they wake up and understand what DRM is all about.
I had a friend who did exactly as you describe. A couple of months later he got a new soundcard, installed the new windoze driver for it and
Not one.
Faced with having to do weeks of work all over again (or downgrade to his older card again) he did finally listen, and ripped his entire collection into ogg-vorbis format.
Why ogg? Because, like me, he has a portable device that will play it (a Rio Karma), and because he didn't ever want to have to do this again, and ogg enjoys freeom not only from DRM, but from patents as well. With software patents threatening Europe, and enforcement beginning to rear its ugly head here in the US, the days of MP3 may be as limited as those of WMA.
Consumers will learn their lesson. It will cost them, but they will learn it. Unfortunately, most of them have so bought into the corporate doublespeak eminating from Redmond and Washington that they will only learn it the hard way, from being struck in the face, repeatedly, by their DRM-crippled products and the gaping hole where their wallets, and music collections, used to be.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy