Challenging Music Downloading Myths

The BBC is reporting on a study by digital music research firm The Leading Question, which found that people who download music from peer to peer networks paid for four and a half times more music than regular music fans. Also that most of these people "are extremely enthusiastic about paid-for services, as long as they are suitably compelling." What is nice is that the BPI welcomed the findings that not all file sharers are actually evil... they still pledged to carry on the 'carrot and stick' approach though.

Comments

Downloading isn't evil at all.

[Captain Scurvy]

I know it's illegal and that it can possibly hurt artists, but if it wasn't for downloading music illegally, I would have never bothered listening to Michael Buble, would have never bought two tickets to his show, and would have never spent over $200 on merchandise afterwards. So there's a good side to it as well that isn't always as obvious.

Re:Downloading isn't evil at all.

[RedSteve]

unfortunately, since the labels don't see any of the ticket or merchandise money -- only money from the sales of the albums -- they couldn't care less about anything from your post after "downloading music illegally".

Re:Downloading isn't evil at all.

[jellomizer]

The music indrustry doesn't want you to listen to different music they want you to listen to their popular music that you know from the radio. Because then they can mass produce the CD's, saving a lot in manufacturing costs, and sell them at a much higher price, because they are popular. The recording companies dont want you spending money on show tickets, and merchandise because the artest gets a bigger cut of the action, and not them. If everyone had a different favorate musicain the recording indrustry couldn't make much money because they will have to many products with the overhead involved. That is why Internet download are dangerious because it makes people aware of different music.

Re:Downloading isn't evil at all.

[tclark]

Recording companies don't care about consumers; they're scared as hell that the artists will decide that they don't need record companies any more. The artists will quit signing with them, or they will insist on better terms.

Recording companies stay in business because they control artists' access to listeners. The Internet is threatening this, and the recording companies are going apeshit over it.

Try before you buy

[spaztech]

It's nice to hear the CD before you pay $20 for one good song and fifteen crap songs. I have never downloaded off of a P2P myself though.. ((smile))

You're wasting your time

[Weaselmancer]

The whole piracy/peer-to-peer argument has been done and done. And no matter how powerful the argument, the industry believes that every single time you download something, they lose a sale. And that's that.

Statistics and studies do not matter to these people. Your desire to kick the tires before you buy doesn't matter either. You got it - you didn't pay for it - we lost money. Of course the reality of it is something totally different, but these organizations have had a stranglehold on their commodity for so long, they're not comfortable with anything less than a stranglehold.

So they fight. And if that means ignoring studies and taking up ridiculous positoins - so be it. We're convinced - but they are never going to be.

Re:Common knowledge.

[Phisbut]

Seriously, with quality services such as iTunes out there, what legitimate reasons do people have to download mass quantities of music they haven't paid for?

Because not every bit of music is available with iTunes... If you're looking for music from American artists, then you'll probably find it there, but don't try finding more "local" music or you'll be deceived.

What I truly hate about iTunes though is that they actually have the music I want, but it's only available on their German store, or on their British store, or even sometimes on their US store, but not on the Canadian store, which I am required to use because I live in Canada (global market my ass).

They have the file I want to pay for, but they won't let me pay for it, so guess what? I'm gonna figure out another way to get it, and that other way might not involve payment.

RIAA = bad, downloaders = good

[calvind]

Anyone else think the people who are harming the music industry are the RIAA? People who download music off the Internet (hardcore music lovers) probably take up a majority of the people who spread awareness about music artist's songs.

The real problem

[Ostien]

How about record companies sign bands that are fresh and innovative not the same old crap and perhapse overall record sales and legal downloading revenu will go up.

carrots?

[ctnp]

"'...which is why we need to continue our carrot and stick approach to the problem of illegal file-sharing,' he [Philips] said."

  What carrots? All I see are sticks. Are good file-sharers being rewarded at all? Let's see...

  New CD at Best Buy, at a cut-rate price: $12.00

  Paying for an entire CD with 15 songs off of iTunes: $14.85, not including the hidden costs of their DRM.

  It seems all we're getting are sticks and heavier sticks from the recording industry. Yet they think they're being nice by offering to license music for a more expensive price. Fuck them, I'll save my $15 bucks and download free music off archive.org.

Re:carrots?

[Rude Turnip]

"Paying for an entire CD with 15 songs off of iTunes: $14.85,"

If you download the whole album (instead of one track at a time) it's only $10, or about $0.67 per song. There is a well-known tool for removing Apple's (intentionally) weak DRM, so that's barely an issue anymore.

Things never change

[rudy_wayne]

While going through some old magazines, I came across a copy of "Modern Recording" from early 1981.

24 years ago, the recording industry was making the same exact claims that they are making today -- they are losing huge amounts of money due to "piracy". Back in those days, personal computers and the Internet were almost non-existant. CDs didn't exist and the main form of recorded music was the vinyl LP. According to the RIAA back then, the villain was cassette tape recorders. People were borrowing their friends albums and recording them onto cassettes instead of buying their own copy.

So, the RIAA commissioned a study that they hoped to take to Congress as proof that they needed tougher laws to deal with this terrible problem. But a funny thing happened. Their study showed that people who had a good quality cassette deck in their stereo sysytem bought nearly twice as many albums as people who didn't.

Sound familiar?