iPod Owners Not Thieves

An anonymous reader writes "Remember last year when Microsoft head Steve Ballmer said iPod owners were music thieves and their iPods were full of stolen music? It turns out they're actually less likely to download music using filesharing software than owners of other MP3 players. A lot less likely." From the article: "A survey of US and UK music buyers reveals that although 25 per cent of people admit to downloading music from file-sharing services, only seven per cent of iPod owners do so. Proving that iPod users are either scrupulously honest or more paranoid they'll get sued by RIAA than owners of lesser music players."

Comments

"Lesser music players..." -- ???

[eldavojohn]

Proving that iPod users are either scrupulously honest or more paranoid they'll get sued by RIAA than owners of lesser music players."

Sounds like flamebait to me. Calling every other music player "lesser." Yeah, no other music player holds up to an iPod.

In my opinion, I think there is some competition to consider before making that bold statement.

Convenience

[vijayiyer]

People who have iPods have demonstrated a willingness to pay for ease of use and simplicity. That they would spend money at the iTunes Music Store to easily download music rather than go through the hassle of downloading it from a p2p network should not be surprising.

Or another possibility

[TWX]

"Proving that iPod users are either scrupulously honest or more paranoid they'll get sued by RIAA than owners of lesser music players."

Or, that since they have a legal, inexpensive way to obtain the specific music that they want to play, they are more inclined to actually spend $5.00 to get five songs from five different bands instead of $16 for twelve songs from one band, with only one song that they actually want.

Or still, that the people who bought iPods coincidentally are also the same people who already have large CD collections, so they were inclined to rip and encode their music specifically so that they could play it on the iPod, rather than having to resort to scavenging the Internet for music because they were too cheap to pay for it...

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[account_deleted]

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I disagree with the conclusions.

[XorNand]

Proving that iPod users are either scrupulously honest or more paranoid they'll get sued by RIAA than owners of lesser music players.

Option C:) Apple has successfully eliminated the incentive to "steal" music by making it cheaper to buy iTunes tracks than to use alternative backchannels. We all make time/money trade-offs everyday: eating out vs. cooking our own food, changing our own oil vs. paying someone else $25 to do it, buying a Roomba or vacuuming our place more often. Buying music isn't any different. iTunes with an iPod can't get any easier and therefore saves a lot of people valuable time.

I'm no Apple fanboy, but I give them major kudos to pull off what the RIAA and the major labels are too stupid to understand. This was a technological and economical war from the beginning. Damn them for perverting it into a legal one as well.

Is that the only conclusion?

[jeffmeden]

"A survey of US and UK music buyers reveals that although 25 per cent of people admit to downloading music from file-sharing services, only seven per cent of iPod owners do so. Proving that iPod users are either scrupulously honest or more paranoid they'll get sued by RIAA than owners of lesser music players."

Another option is that Ipod owners are scrupulously DIShonest, making their numbers a lot lower. Come on, this is like a survey of inner city people who regularly J-walk. You have three categories, the ones that do and admit it, the ones that don't and are proud of it, and the ones that do but say they don't because they are too self conscious.

Obvious explanation

[Jimmy_B]

The iPod is closely associated with iTunes, which makes getting music legally more convenient than downloading. Also, iPod owners are likely to have more money to spend on music than owners of less expensive mp3 players.

Are you sure it isn't about price?

[khasim]

Proving that iPod users are either scrupulously honest or more paranoid they'll get sued by RIAA than owners of lesser music players.

Personally, I think it is just like we saw with the advent of cheap VHS tapes. When the moves were $100+, most people rented them and copied them. When the price dropped to $20, people buy them instead.

Once you bring the price down to a certain point, the average person will pay for a legal copy.

Paranoid?

[plover]

"Proving that iPod users are either scrupulously honest or more paranoid they'll get sued by RIAA than owners of lesser music players."

Paranoid? How about "three times more likely to lie to a potential RIAA lawyer that they download music?" Or "three times less stupid?" Perhaps, less inflammatorily, we could say "iPod owners are three times more informed about the rapacious RIAA barrators."

I don't think it counts as paranoia when they're publicly taking down 8-year-old girls and 72-year-old grandmas. It's self preservation.

Re:Could be that iPod owners...

[SimplexO]

are more enticed to use the bundled iTunes legal purchasing software that works well with their computer, their iPod, and the fact that they really don't understand computers? Isn't this software Darwinism? Build good software and they will come, right?

My brother got a nano and he got my dad to buy some music from iTMS, even though he had previously gotten them for free off of peer networks. He could have gotten those songs for free, but since his iPod came with iTunes, he used the included software to get some music. Songs at a reasonable price, found using software he can use. It all makes sense to me.