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Canadian Record Industry Disputes Own P2P Claims
CRIAWatch writes "The Canadian Recording Industry Association has quietly issued a new
study that contradicts many of its own claims about the impact of P2P
usage on the music industry. Michael Geist summarizes
the 144 page study by noting that the research 'concludes that P2P
downloading constitutes less than one-third of the
music on downloaders' computers, that P2P users frequently try music on
P2P services before they buy, that the largest P2P downloader
demographic is also the largest music buying demographic, and that
reduced purchasing has little to do with the availability of music on
P2P services.'"
This has got to be the first time the recording industry has said anything surprising, or possibly realistic regarding piracy.
I'm scared, someone hold me.
Um. In keeping with the invisible nature of P2P (intentional or otherwise). How does anyone know that they have the facts?
No shit.
Glad they finally figured it out...
Today's show is brought to you by the number 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0: 25
About time someone pointed out the obvious. The most mindnumbing about the whole RIAA/MPAA debacle is how they keep blaming their diminishing sales on the consumers as if we are required to buy so many of their products per year. Last time I checked, when a business's sales are dwindling, its time to try something new, or perhaps even innovate. However, their brand of innovation, i.e. suing everyone, seems to be a bit counter-productive.
Of course, it doesn't help when they have the government in their pocket either.
2/3rds of the music on my computer is from ocremix... although I guess if you want to bitch I did download that via bittorrent.
I haven't read the 144 page research report, but I think it is worth noting that the person who summarized this report, states at the end of his summary that he has been claiming for a long time that p2p downloading doesn't affect sales that much. In other words, he has a perspective on the issue. Somehow, I find it hard to believe that the recording industry is going to look at the stat which shows that a 1/3 of music on computers is from (presumably copyright-violation style) downloading (this is for the most-frequently-purchasing demographic (teenie-boppers)), and say "oh yeah, p2p doesn't harm our bottom line. The recording industry has a different perspective ... they'll say they're losing 33% of their sales and have a freak fit.
... naaa.
Anyway, I wonder if people were asked this questions: "of music you have downloaded (as in copyright violation style), how much of that music is good enough to keep for a 1x/decade listen, but not worth buying?" Maybe I should RTF 144pg report
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
...just can't get anything right, can they...sheesh.
Everyone here knows it. I buy more music now, not less. And I'm a huge P2P user. I don't buy or even listen to anything from a major label. I don't care if my boycott has any political significance. It's a personal choice. I'm done supporting them. I'm indifferent to whether they survive or not. So I pretty much stopped in to reiterate the obvious. Since it's early in the thread and all... I also like buying used CDs, electronic trance etc from ebay and places like that. Stuff that didn't have huge production runs and are out of print and can't be purchased new. And my mp3 collection otherwise is stuff I wouldn't buy or couldn't find on CD...
Most audiophiles are not going to have a giant music library of all pirated music and have 0 CDs or purchased media.
Personally, the only time I use gnutella or such is when I need a copy of a song without DRM for whatever reason. I already have the song on CD or from iTunes.
This study is pretty much redundant. This has been said again and again. But not that the RIAA [is going/wants] to listen.
"Everything worth innovating today will go to court tomorrow."
It seems so obvious. It always has been obvious.
Except, I do remember a colleague of mine filling half the available diskspace on my company computers with Napster music downloads back in 2000. He was racing to beat the crackdown. He burned a lot of CD's from that frenzy of music downloads...
...let me look out the window...OMFG, no shit, it's snowing in hell, well I'll be...um...damned. =P -c
- Coincidence, I think not!
- Correlation is not causation
- In soviet russia, the music industry reflect on itself. (This one is so good I should reuse it later)
while I have this song about how "I love cliches" playing in my head and wondering to myself:
"if a 20 second exerpt of a song is fair use than what if I repeat the same thing for 3 minutes and it produce the full song; is it still fair use?" I am now reminding myself of Rigel in Farscape on a sugar high and trying to remember which episode number it was so I can watch it again soon. I'm totally making a Hunter S. Thomson of myself, whew! For the nostalgic, I make some mention of preserving my Karma by posting anonymously.
This last one will definitely make me loose slee~~!@~ NO CARRIER
If this was Fark there would be a BIG farking OBVIOUS tag on the post! Which ony slightly beats out the ASININE tag that the idustry itself receives
1. Never, ever pay for anything that you can download.
2. Make sure your friends and relatives know how to download stuff for free.
3. Make sure your friends and relatives know they cannot be caught or sued if they just download. Sharing or uploading is what all lawsuits have been based on.
4. Remember that if it is free, it is probably crap. But so is what you would pay for.
you, as a dedicated RIAA-hater and music lover illegally download music and take whatever risk is associated with that. Then, with no apparent benefit, you go and pay the RIAA and the rest of the industry that you would like to change.
Why? Guilt?
If you are going to download, why purchase? You aren't getting your point across. The only way folks are going to convince the content owners, artists, composers and so on and so forth that they must release their material for free is to STOP BUYING.
OK, if you are a dedicated law-abiding citizen that fears the reprisals if they download a song, fine - do without. But if you are downloading anyway WHAT ARE YOU DOING PAYING FOR IT? This destroys the entire concept of "it has to be free or we will just steal it" that everyone is pushing for.
Please, understand what you are fighting for. It is the elimination of the possibility of any financial reward for anything that can be expressed in digital media. While this view may not be shared by everyone, it certainly should be shared by all "downloaders".
I wonder when the recording industry is going to realize they are fighting a battle that cant be won.
I used to buy CDs constantly. And now with the implimentation of DRM on CDs and not knowing what type of software is installing when you insert a CD in your computer. I dont dare buy a new CD. I want to be able to buy a CD and encode it into any format i want to put it on whatever device i own. And until i really own the music i buy, im not going to spend my money on some music that might be locked inside their encryption. In 20 years my music i bought might be gone because I cant use it in new devices and technology, or with every new advancement in technology Im left converting my entire collection to some new and improved DRM format because of a firmware upgrade because a new bug is found.
Until I get to choose how I use the music I buy, instead of them telling me how, I wont purchase any.
I'm glad to see some honesty in this article, even if it's contradictory honesty.
The Emperor has a nice suit on -- his birthday suit.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
In fact, I have only bought CD's in the last long many years simply because of P2P. Excruciating story short,,, I simply hadn't heard the likes of what I listen to now. Never knew it existed. Thanks to the non strategy of P2P, it seems to be to those that simply are seeking.
If do a grep and cut out each "eh", it narrows down the document to 2 pages.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
1. Americans tend to dump on Canadians
2. A Canadian institution has seen the light on an issue where its U.S. counterpart is clueless
3. Dumping on Canada for this is therefore the incorrect response.
4. This is called "irony".
Irony is used in many everyday situations to great effect. One of the most common ones around here is entering a building on a rainy day and saying "What beautiful weather we're having." Your response it the equivalent of replying "No, we're not. Look, it's raining!"
Of course, to understand this, you would have to know the context, that is, have read the original posting or even the article. Since this is Slashdot, I'll assume that this is the real root of the problem.
I do not think that it does what you think it does.
I buy CDs because I can afford them, and because I can tell the difference between an mp3 and a CD. Yes, my ears are spoiled by high quality ogg and who rips in that but me?
Anyway, the crap the music industry is making is targetted at people with no money.
Mommy and daddy's money only goes so far, and for a minimum wage worker a CD is a couple hours of work.
Now for a software developer such as myself... a CD is a fraction of an hour of work.
So, hey, why don't they make music that appeals to intelligent music conniseurs with money, rather than target the teenie bopper demographic? They should either put out good stuff that reaches people with money, or lower the price on the shitty stuff. Welcome to economics 101 - one price for all demographics doesn't maximize profits.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
There. I knew something was wrong.
You'd think that with a broadband connection and a leniant ISP I'd be downloading like crazy. Well I don't, not anymore. I admit that each time I learned about a new program (i.e.: Napster, Kazaa, bittorrent) I'd download pretty heavily for a few months because of the novelty.
But I've noticed that most of that stuff just sits there unobserved or unlistened to, taking up space. Or, when I've actually made the effort to watch something it generally lasts about 5 minutes before I turn it off in disgust or from boredom.
If something is worth it, like say the LOTR trilogy, I'll go see it in the theatre, DL a copy to tide me over until the DVD release then purchase both the regular and extended cuts. That's an extreme case. Other things, like for some very strange reason The Chronicles of Riddick, i'll buy on DVD If I really liked the DL and plan to see the next in the series in the theatres.
But that's the problem, I really haven't found much I've liked enough to inspire that. Hollywood really should spend the time and money working on better storylines rather than just remakes, comic books and dumb sequels. In the last 9 months I've downloaded 1 movie: Serenity...and I now own that. Increasingly, it's becoming not worth my precious bandwidth to download anything.
Tell me that p2p and even street-sold pirate records do NOT affect at all record sales.
People (that I know) that download p2p music normally buy "official" records and support (going to shows etc) the musicians they like. They also throw out a lot of the downloaded stuff -- the things that are no good.
There are two kinds of people (that I know) that buy street-sold pirate records: the immense majority are relatively poor people that buy one CD for R$ 3 (US$ 1.50), because they can, and they wouldn't pay R$ 40 (US$ 20) -- which is the price of a hit CD on the stores -- they just would not buy the record at all. Some perspective here: our minimum wage is R$ 300/month (US$ 150) and the price of one record is over 10% this value.
Most medium-class folks I know abstain from buying street-sold pirate records; most of the ones that do, use them as the p2p downloaders: to have a large (as in they'll never hear it all), garbage, music collection, and to select to which musicians they'll support by buying the official records.
Mind you, one of our (reasonably good, 1980's hit) musicians decided to sign off a record company and go indie -- with good results for him. I'm not really a big Lobão fan, but he sells his new CDs on the newspaper stands (because the big record companies tell the music stores "if you buy his CDs I won't sell to you") for R$ 10 -- which is far cheaper than Sony/etc would charge for them.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
finally some officials got it!
I still have no doubt, that the RIAA will ignore these facts and continue suing the pants of 15 year olds...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
are a damn good band,even in the recent past. but it does sort of prove your point, as all the good music is in the extremes these days, and not in the pop pablum sphere.
'grep -v eh Report.txt' will give you just lines that don't have 'eh' in them...
Things fall apart; the centre can not hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blooddimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
are full of passionate intensity.
W. B. Yeats, 1921
Indeed. He meant:
perl -le 'print grep {s/\beh\b//g||1} ' file
... when Napster was in its heydey, I bought more CDs in 6 months than I ever had (or have since) in a year or two outside of that time period.
Being able to browse through someone else's collection and find neat, non-top-40 treasures was just great.
Since then I'm down to one or 2 CDs a year, although iTunes helps a little- I only started doing that very recently.
Some things you just can't stamp out with brute force. Instead, you have to find out what is fueling it and try to reduce that source and acknowledge you'll never be able to fully extinguish it.
- War on Piracy
- War on Poverty
- War on Drugs
- War on Terror
- ...
Did I forget any?Because in most cases people have ripped their existing CD collections to disk. Better question to ask is what percentage of their current playlist is P2P? And I agree with some of the other comments here, in that if I thought that a third of the people out there were ripping me off, I'd freak too.
that the largest P2P downloader demographic is also the largest music buying demographic
In other words, the people with the most interest in music do both. Surprise, surprise.
reduced purchasing has little to do with the availability of music on P2P services
Agree here. Though while decent content is an issue, I also think that other entertainment options (games, dvds) have an impact, as well as reduced salaries, rising gas and oil prices, and other economic factors leading to less disposible income.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Record companies need to offer a better product. And they ought to consider just giving away a couple of songs per artists right off the bat via P2P. It's happening anyway. I'm an idie musician and I've seen jumps in sales every time I give music away. I can only WISH that thousands of people were trading a few of my songs via P2P because it would send some of them to check out my music, and generate some sales. The music industry should take advantage of P2P instead of trying to fight it. The indie movement is already doing this - most indie artists do give away a song or two. Well, the smart ones do, at least...
Music - www.richardmac.com
that's a confession
....a CD of 80's music. To my supprise his tastes was very similiar to my own, as all the songs were ones I liked.
I considered asking him for a copy so that I might remember which groups (and I'm really bad about remembering names and titles, etc..) so that I might buy the albums (this was before itunes and such). Here if I couldn't figure out the artist or album I would have had something I could let someone at the music store hear, to help me pin it down (good for more than just my memory).
But then the music industry piracy flap began and I figured the music industry really didn't want me to remember, and even less wanted me to have anything that might help me find the music to purchase. So I said fuck you RIAA!!! You'd rather call me a pirate than to see me as a customer.... I'm not going to pay you squat for that attitude.
If I buy at all today, I try to not have the RIAA in the transaction at all, but instead buy directly from the artist.
Obviously I don't buy hardly anything at all.
I also grew up helping garage bands out, where some of the musicans have become professional musicians.I've also seen others make it to some label, only to fail the industries financial machinery. So I have a good idea what the struggle is and how important it is who you know, more than how good of an artist you are, and that unless you become really successful, you are pretty much at the mercy of the industry's financial machinery and who you know.
This is not the sort of thing that helps one focus on their music, but rather promotes more mediocer (middle of the road) music, such as we have plenty of today.
But there is this new internet technology and advances in home recording and for any artist(s) that pick that up and runs with it, they can promote themselves thru it as well as the traditional method of live performances. They can build their own following, or in cases of failure, be more able to mix and match with other musicians to find that "sound" that they want, be it music or music and money.
Its by developing their own following that they also increase their bargaining prower with the labels. No more at the industry's mercy, but a player with weight. And this also helps the industry, as the failures don't have to subsidized by the successful artists monitray generation (thus making the theoretical payoff for the successfull signed artist, more)
But it is the story of the RIAA dog, with a fat juicy steak in it mouth, that crossing over a bridge, sees it reflection and its greed causing it to go after the steak in the reflection, resulting in dropping the steak it had, losing it in th e water.
It really is a time to eliminate the old music industry business model. For the benefit of the artist, and let real competition in to bring the consumer better music.
Then all three shops in Helsinki, Finland stopped selling psytrance.
I ordered mine from Sweden or Holland for a while... but why wait 2 weeks for something you can have in 2 hours?
I'm willing to pay. I'm not willing to wait.
When there are no psy shops in Finland, it's morally ok to ware everything. Well, some domestic psy bands exist but Finnish psy is too psy :-)
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
I did read (well, skimmed) the Comment and the 2 Appendices.
The CRIA blames "big corporate radio" for the downturn in CD sales.
Dave Barnes 9 breweries within walking distance of my house
"Across the board, among those who are both successful and struggling, the artists and musicians we surveyed are more likely to say that the internet has made it possible for them to make more money from their art than they are to say it has made it harder to protect their work from piracy or unlawful use."
That may be true, but I know someone who works for the local musician's union and though he supports P2P, the union sure as hell doesn't.
Property is theft.
You have to remember this is Canada, not the viciously capitalistic U.S. Canada is actually progressive and somewhat sensible. The U.S. is all about corporations fucking people around and stupid little peons supporting it in the name of some sacred unalienable rights to screw over consumers that are nowhere to be found in the declaration of independance or constitution.
EpiAdv - if you like Pokey the Penguin, try this comic!
5. you can get everything you want at the library. You can legally borrow it and rip it to MP3 or copy the disc for your personal collection (in Canada, anyway). You can even get new/popular stuff if you simply put a hold on it. In my town, you can place a hold online, and they'll check all the libraries in the area and bring it to the library of your choice when it's available. The wait is usually somewhere between 3 days and 2 weeks. They call you when it's ready for pickup.
I've not had a need to download when all the material I want is available for free right there.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
I can count on one hand the amount of CDs I've bought since I first came across napster in like 1999. However, discounting that get xx CDs for a penny from Columbia house, I can also count on one hand the amount I bought pre-napster. Infact, since I was young and flaked on the columbia house thing, I don't think I actually bought any CDs pre napster. I like music, but I don't listen to it religiously so it doesn't make sense for me to go out and pay $40-$50 for the type of CD I might like. I'm sure a lot of other people feel the same way.
.. people would rather be honest and treated fairly after all?
Damn! This is going to fuck up a LOT of business plans.
The MPAA and RIAA viciously prevent new capital from being created by dampening ability and desire to experiment with existing music to create new mixes.
They also strive to create new capital by overpricing their records, and DRM, with little thought for the consumer.
EpiAdv - if you like Pokey the Penguin, try this comic!
See, I would buy the music I like...but...since most of the bands I like I'd have to mail a check to the band in the netherlands and wait for them to mail me back a record (yes, record, not CD)...it just doesn't seem worth it... Besides, the RIAA don't care about those bands anyways...lol My latest favorite band I can find on last.fm and some russian pay-to-download site...and that's it. And it's REALLY quite annoying. Maybe that's the reason the RIAA is getting less money now...people realize there's better music out there and they can get it...from other countries...and before the internet (which also happens to be before P2P...hmmm...) they were stuck with US bands...so they had no other choice for music really.
See, this is why you shouldn't define global variables. Now we're all scroood!
Tsk tsk.
sed 's/eh\.//' file | sed 's/eh\?//' > smallfile
that's me to a T, and worth it to note that new CD's aren't even that important right now, if you stop to consider truly how much *good* music's already been produced that they just slipped by. Why even go to a Brand-Name CD store and pay a 1/3rd more for the same thing, with *less* variety then it's used CD cousin. That's the beauty of burning used CD's.. the good stuff gets around and the CD's cost less for everyone. For material they no longer need anyway... That's really the great part about mp3. Let's not let them take that away, for it was their 'slip' in this regard that even warned the greater part of the world audience that they should worry about it to begin with!
yea.
That may be true, but the reality is the recording industry always makes sure the artists you hear the most are those who are drinking their kool-aid.
Heh. Now imagine what the stats must be like in countries where P2P music downloading isn't legal.
So, if we could copy food limitlessly, we shouldn't let the hungry people have it, because the food-producers need to be compensated?
Ahh, like Monsanto?
Cheers
Stor
"Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"
The real reason that these moooosic companies are losing market share is not downloading. It is that their offerings are such a poor excuse for music. They are not offering the public a salable product, pure and simple. Then they are accusing their customers of conspiring to actually steal the crap. What a crock! The industry has never offered more than lies and propaganda (more of the same) to back up their fraudulent claims.....but then most slashdotters know this already.