Slashdot Mirror
Canadian Music Industry Says Downloading Declining
An anonymous reader writes "A new survey conducted by a Canadian music collective that counts the recording industry as one of its members has found that music downloading has declined dramatically in Canada. The survey found that only 14 percent of Canadians download, down from 21 percent in 2002. The survey also found that P2P is rarely a reason for people who purchase less music."
of tainted piracy stats!
The Canadians have internet?
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
Time for the RIAA to release one of their reports, I guess, 'proving' that downloads are actuallys till on the increase and pirates kill small kittens for fun while they wait for their downloads, and that P2P is the ONLY reason people don't buy as many CDs as the RIAA wants them to.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Though downloading may or may not be declining here in Canada, what do you think the chances are of them reducing or eliminating the blank media tax?
Once you download everything you need, why download any more? Once you've downloaded the good stuff, it is not like there is anything new coming out to make you want to keep downloading more and more.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Don't forget, kids: this is Canada! Laws (physical, psychological, sociological, whatever) applying to Canadian people would never apply to anyone else. Especially U.S. citizens. Heck, they don't even lock their houses!
Because I have downloaded all music known to man, I no longer need to pursue this.
Posting anon for obvious reasons.
I love music, I have a huge CD Collection, but recently I have not been purchasing too many CDs. This last couple of months I bought 3 CDs. The new Barenaked Ladies CD, the new Blue Rodeo Album, and a classic Bruce Springsteen album. Well... The new barenaked ladies I listed to once, and put away. Same with the Blue Rodeo Album (not a good effort Mr. Cuddy). The classic Bruce Springsteen was just great. I can point to several CDs by the Barenaked Ladies and Blue Rodeo that were incredibly. So why would I buy CDs that I'm going to listen to once? I'm just going to continue to listen to the albums published years ago that were great, and are still great. As for the new stuff, I'm going to listen to it on the radio, and in the unlikely event that some great music appears, I will buy it. That is why music sales are down, I think, people just are getting tired of crap. I hate to say it, but from a Canadian perspective, Canadian Content should be more concerned with the content than the Canadian.
Mean what you say...say what you mean.
"what do you think the chances are of them reducing or eliminating the blank media tax?"
My subject line is only quoting the idiots who are going to come along and say that the Canadian CD tax is not a tax, but it is actually a "levy" (which is defined, of course, as a type of tax). Maybe they will read this, and troll no more.
Where were you when the voynix came?
It could also be that people are far less inclined to admit they download files or use peer-to-peer services, what with the entertainment industry's litigious proclivities and whatnot.
I don't understand why they should care... unless they can somehow prove that all downloads are illegal, this isn't even relevant to their business!
1-We Canadians, already downloaded all the American music. 2-ISPs not getting cheaper in Canada and people switching to cheaper plans 3-Related to 1, people become crazy.
You're right it's not a tax and it is a levy AND there is a big difference. Taxes are collected by governments which in theory are accountable to the people. The levy is collected by a special interest group which is ONLY accountable to its members. A tax would be fairer.
Quick, you Canuck slackers! Get to downloading!
What want to know is...Why is Canada able to tax media ?...I mean I think they should be treated like any other state in the USA.
Summation 2
With the availability of large external storage, did anybody talk about sharing? You don't need to download something when you can go over to your friends' house and leave with a copy of it.
Not only pop music is crap, I can't use it as background music for work, nor just listen to it. Why waste time searching and downloading such music?
However, during my visit to Auckland, I found a somewhat small CD/DVD store that is more for music enthusiasts. They had listening booths, and through that I found an indie artist's CD published by a local company. Listened to it, loved it, plopped down NZD$30 because it's not crap,not to mention over there, they are not influenced by RIAA, especially its independant status. Yes, it was ~USD$20, but it was a single CD packed full to 74 minutes of good music in 13 different tracks, not like the popular culprits that have a CD with 10 tracks and 30 minutes of crap. A little while before that I also brought some other CDs by independant artists published by their own record labels. I pay good money for good music, and only if those good money go to the artists themselves. If only RIAA and its members learned sooner.
Also, streamripper with a good online radio station means not searching/downloading from P2P, and I can listen to music later.
Please direct all bug reports to
Don't forget the obligatory versions by Anne Murray (English) and Celine Dionne (French). There is also the one by Cartman to consider. This is the one that was recorded as part of the settlement over the defamation-of-nation lawsuit settled in the wake of the South Park movie.
Where were you when the voynix came?
The article does not tell us anything about the survey methods that they used. Did they use the same survey as reported from earlier data? Differences in survey design can have huge consequences on the outcome and may make comparisons moot.
Also, people might be more likely to say they are not downloading music when, in fact, they are downloading as much or more. The fear of recrimination for admitting to downloading may be pushing people to simply be dishonest when surveyed.
But I see how the poll questions could result in it appearing that way.
... but I don't see that as being the case.
When they do these polls, they typically call a house. My wife or I might respond to a request like this, my 13 year-old-daughter never would.
In the last year, my downloading has dropped off the map - Got satilite (sp bad I know) radio in both vehicles, so despite having grotequely bad local radio in my city, I hear lots of new stuff in my primary "place of listening". Don't need to download for that.
On the other hand, my daughter has gone from "never done it" to "nearly daily" in the last year as she's gotten into music, coupled with getting her own mp3 player, coupled with becoming savvy enough to find stuff she likes.
so, depending on how the survey questions were asked, and more importantly, who responded to those questions, I can easily see there being the appearance of a drop in downloading
Reason why there is hope for the future generation #364:
"I wish my grass was emo so it could cut itself."
So, this should (according to their logic) show as a very noticeable increased sales, right?
My other SIG is a Sauer.
Canadians didn't download less! We just got smarter: if we keep saying "yes, I download music from the net for free" all over the place, our government tax us. So now we keep it quiet :)
Comon Canada! Pick it up! You're letting your guard down and slacking off with your peetwopeeing.
Kind of disappointing. j/k. I wonder if the RIAA would be happy if we didn't have the highest percentage.
I may be incorrect here, but as I understood Canadian law pertaining to file sharing (granted, from /. not exactly a degree-granting institution), Canadians already pay a levy on all recordable media which is then passed on to the Canadian equivalent of the RIAA to reimburse artists. In addition, Canadian copyright law makes unauthorized distribution (uploading) illegal, however downloading is not. If this is true, and I cede that I may have this muddled, then Canadians should be downloading day and night from every source they can find! You're already paying for it, might as well take advantage of the legal loophole while it exists.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
.... there is nothing new worth downloading, & people have already filled their back catalogs...
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Obviously Vanilla Ice needs to make a huge comeback and help out his fellow countrymen!
It really makes sense that downloading is declining. I know that if I take a look at my playlist, they are mostly songs that were released before 2000. The way I see it, once MP3s became popular everyone started to download their favorite music. Now a few years after the fact they are still downloading but just not in the mass quantity that they were before due to the fact that they have already downloaded all of their favorite music from the previous 40 years. There isn't enough new music coming out to keep up that trend in downloading and for what it's worth IMO the new music that is coming out today for the most part sucks. The same trend would happen if a new format came out. You would see a rush in the beginning when everyone would get all of the favorite songs in the new format and then the stats would start to trail off. btw - Buy the new Grady album... it's pretty damn wicked.
Does Netcraft confirm it?
Same flaw as the drug use "statistics". The data collection is flawed from the get-go. What idiot admits he breaks the law on a regular basis to a complete stranger? What kind of person would sit down and fill out the form? Like those "declines" in drug use among kids -- what, you asked the kids? Gee, I wonder if they fib.
obviously this shows that DRM and security measures are working. or that more people are lying out of their asses. or that a different group of people were surveyed.
Bury me in mashed potatoes.
Really, the big picture here is most of the publicly known P2P services are gone or have gone the way of the buck. You have to go BT or underground to get your mp3's now if you want the five finger discount, which most simpletons can't do.
I have said some of the following points before, but feel they belong with this discussion, so will repeat the necessary ones.
.. or .. or .. get it? You can't stop them, and you're spending so much money trying that it is laughable. "Like watching a bunch of retards trying to hump a doorknob." Wisen-up and use that money for CD art and packages so enticing that downloading seems dumb rather than worth it.
Not all artists care if their music is downloaded. Many artists make the most from their live shows, so many want you to download away as long as you buy a ticket to the concert. Sure the record company might suffer a little, but they often screw the artists to begin with (Warner Bros vs Zappa comes to mind).
One good song does NOT make an entire album worth buying. If you suck but have a good song or two, or you're simply a one-hit-wonder, don't expect to sell a ton of records. People will most likely want to save their money for good ALBUMS while downloading your one good song. Want to sell a whole CD? Write worth-while stuff, you rehashed, tired, same-old-garbage dumbasses.
Make the CD worth owning in other ways, too. I think I may spend another $13.99 on a second copy of Beck's new "The Information" because a) the entire disc is excellent and the included DVD is great b) the stickers to create your own unique cover is genius.
If you prevent people from using Kazaa, they'll use limewire. If you prevent them from using limewire, they'll switch to bearshare. or shareaza. or iMesh, or morpheus, or
Most people I know can't stand the radio these days. Sitting through all those shitty songs and ads and talk for what? Most music is so devoid of any real content or originality now that people may as well use internet radio and p2p to get what they want rather than play russian-roulette with FM. Use that internet vehicle to promote the good new artists, and have ads that help generate revenue, or something. Get with it, you archaic imbeciles - people don't want the new band that sounds like Nickelback the third, but also aren't willing to sit through the overplayed garbage in the hopes a new, worthwhile band will have something played. It is difficult to discover new bands right now, and often the easiest way is through sites that have comparisons to other bands and genres. The chances of the radio Gods selecting something new that you'll like is slim, and then the chances that you haven't died of boredom while waiting for them to play it on top of that doesn't help the situation.
All in all, fighting the internet now is like fighting sliced bread. Bang rocks together, guys.
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77 77 77 2e 6d 65 6c 76 69 6e 73 2e 63 6f 6d
Of course the amount of downloads are dropping,
...' into different songs anyway?
everyone has everything already,
iTunes fills in the gap.
Bargain Bins of CDs are available at just about every retail outlet.
Libraries and friends are always nice enough to loan out CDs.
How many songs can one human brain remember?
Just because you can fit 30,000 songs on an iPod doesn't mean you'll want to Listen to 30,000 songs!!
(and just how many ways can you work 'oh oh baby! I luv ya
After the first 10,000 songs the rest all start to sound like something else....zzzzzz )
Apparently, today's music sucks so bad that it's not even worth downloading it for free.
Album art has been in a major decline over the years. If more bands made CD cases with interesting packaging like Tool's 10,000 days I know more people would buy the CDs. Maybe people are seeing that it is nice to have the inserts and what not as well and are starting leave the fad of downloading behind. Also with all the spyware that comes with most P2P software they have decided to start going back to buying their music. Then again maybe they only like one or two songs off an album and have gone to iTunes to buy their music at what they feel is a good price.
The quality of recent releases may have nothing to do with the decline in downloads. The majority of release in any time frame have always been crap. The decline is probably due to the fact that people have finished downloading the older stuff that they liked. They are caught up, and only need to download the new stuff they like.
It looks like, despite Slashdot's summary, what they actually polled people about was p2p sharing, not downloading. So it excludes getting stuff from web and ftp sites, iTunes Music Store, etc. Last I heard, iTMS was pretty popular and ignoring it when looking at downloads, is just plain silly. Perhaps it's not available to Canadians?
It wouldn't surprise me if downloading has actually gone down. The **AA in this country and and its sister agencies internationally have been somewhat successful in shutting down the big p2p networks. There seem like there are more p2p nets out there than "back in the day" but they are less well known, and so Joe Blogg isn't able to download as easily anymore, and is probably worried about all the lawsuits. Ofcourse recording industry sales have also gone down so maybe both sales and downloading are down because people are not downloading crappy new releases :-P
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Actually uploading on P2P apps is also considered legal in Canada, this has been tested in court even.
Personal copying is legal in Canada.
There is a levy on blank media. This levy is used to compensate industry members for illegal copying.
The two are completely distinct. Correlation is not causality.
Why bother downloading when you can legally copy CDs you borrow from friends or public libraries? This is how I got more than the 5000 pieces of music I have, most of them copied from other CDs.
"Only sick music makes money today." -- Friedrich Nietzsche in 1888.
I'm sorry, the number you have dialed is an imaginary number. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and dial again.
I'll just increase my downloading to make up for the rest of the slackers, get back to downloading those songs!
But seriously, CD prices have fallen a bit which is great, but the cd's I want to buy are ridicoulous. $25-$30 for cd from a decent band? I don't think so.
There was time when i used to by those CD's at those prices, but now theres no incentive for me too, so i use my extra money to buy movies(at least in DVD's they throw in tons of extras, with a cd they throw in a rootkit). That and I buy several copies of the firefly boxset.
"However, if you and your 10,000 closest friends end up with copies of the artists song and the artist ends up with ZERO, NADA, begging for food on the street corner when they should have rightfully had at least a few grand then something bad happened and all your weasel wording won't hide that fact."
....which has nothing at all to do with pointing out the cold, clear, and simple fact that copyright infringment and theft are different crimes.
You have to realize that there are a lot more crimes than just theft and that pointing out that a particular crime is not theft is not a justification for that crime. The only "weaseling" here is in calling copyright infringment "theft".
We can use your specific example of the "artist begging for food on the street corner". How can this happen? Copyright infringement is one way. Another way is a violent crime which leaves him severely disabled. Another way is arson (burning down his house and his bestseller novel inside). Why point these out? These are all crimes, which can result in what you describe. However, none of them is "theft".
"Artists *should* be compensated for new works by people who consume those new works"
Speaking of abusing words, I recall a major recording artist who said "If you are consuming my music, you are doing something wrong". Look up the definition of "consume" at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/consume There's no way you can consume music by listening to it in an MP3 player unless it has some sort of DRM which makes the song get "used up" after multiple listens. The only time I ever consumed music was when I played a modern LP in an old Victrola. The heavy needle made it a one-play-and-that's-all situation.
"You see it all the time- people do things wrong and rationalize it to themselves that it's not wrong and then they get in trouble because they lose proper caution."
"Put another way-- it's one thing to have a joint at a concert surrounded by 20,000 strangers and quite another to have one in the starbucks or casually walking down a major thoroughfare."
This is actually a sort of apt analogy, because smoking a joint is theft no less than copyright infringement is.
"I know that pro-infringers like to argue that and I've got just a few mp3's myself."
If pointing out that infringement is not theft makes one "pro-infringement", I have a question. Is murder the same as theft? If you deny it, that makes you pro-murder!!!!
Where were you when the voynix came?
To my knowlege the following is true:
Downloading is perfectly legal.
Uploading is perfecttly legal.
However distributing (that is actively or passively) to multiple parties is a more sketchy ground. I wouldn't call it legal anyway.
The big differance is how the two legal systems (Canada vs the USA) are set up to allow for the proscutions of such offences. In the USA I hear what happens is the RIAA initially sues a "John Doe" on an ISP from a particular state that allows this. The whole point of this, is to force the ISP to reveal their user lists. Once the RIAA gets this list and thus a name, they drop all charges with "John Doe". It is at this point they start a new charge in the state and against the named individual. This is the point where people get a letter to extort, erm, I mean settle out of court, as most do.
This tatic does not work in Canada. In Canada you can't sue some fictional person. You actually have to sue a person. The Canadian version of the RIAA has repeadedly tried to force the ISP's to disclose their user lists, so they can get to a suein'. However as much as I hate the Bell's and Rogers's of the world due to their monoloplistic tendancies, and brutal customer service, it is at this point that I must applaud. As both bell and rogers has told the CRIA (or whatever it is called) to go to hell, as have the courts. The privacy laws in Canada will not allow it. If there is a criminal case and evidence then for sure the courts can force the ISP to disclose a name, but you can't go and sue 5000 John Doe's here.
So while sueing Americans is actually profitable, sueing Canadians would not be, as they would have to do due process on each individual BEFORE the extortion letters go out. Whereas in the USA, they only have to do that on those that refuse to pay up. Nice eh?
Currently it seems that the CRIA has changed their tatics, and are instead trying to lobby to try and change laws or implement new ones through bribing, erm, I mean contribuiting illegally (by illegally I mean in Canada there is a cap to how much a individual can donate to a political party. However I have heard of accounts where an individual will max out, as will their spouse, and their 3 children, including a baby that is 6 months old. While technically this might, and I stress might as I don't know, might be legal, it certainly isn't ethical, or holding to the sperit of the law) to copyright "friendly" political canidates... Which is pretty damn dirty pool if you ask me.
Anyway as mentioned by the parent we all pay an invisible media tax (never mind you might use said media to back up your data files), that goes to a pot that the CRIA controls. I have no idea if a single cent has made it to Sloan and other music folks, though it wouldn't surprise me a whole lot if I learned that some portion or even a large portion goes to the "administration" of the CRIA, and ultimaly to copyright "friendly" dinners and such.
Anyway this somehow turned into a big rant, so sorry.
I thought i'd add -- in case everyone didn't already know, that this phenomenon is pretty much responsible for the "ZOMG decline in sales!!11 Piracy!!!1"
See the decline in sales was due to people finishing their cassette-to-CD upgrade and no longer buying the huge amount of CDs they bought in the mid 90s.
I guess it'd be nice if people finish their CD-to-mp3 "up"grade and the RIAA could stop doing their chicken little act.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
The reasoin why I've downloaded (dramatically) fewer files is that I can get what I want the frist time via BitTorrent. I'm no longer sifting through hunderds of copies of an artist in an attempt to weed out poor encodes, damaged files, files made from radio recordings, etc. BitTorrent sites tell me the audio sorce, quality, format and at the same time give me the whole album so I can decide if I want to buy it (and if it innovative and good, I do buy. The Books is a good point-in-case for me), or delete the files off my drive. If a torrent is no good, it tends to die. If it is good, it tends to get re-seeded. I guess this is all just a long winded way of saying that there is a lot less guess-n-checking going on and as a result, fewer files being downlaoded.
More people are using the likes of peerguardian to ban the IP's from which they and other insitutions snoop.
Perhaps P2P usage is declining overall among all Canadians because there may be fewer people in the younger age demographic now than there were a few years ago? It would also be interesting to see how P2P trends have changed within each age bracket over the years.
This must include people that dont have computers. I think if there way to really determine the actual numbers, they might see that among people that have computers, 99% of them download something illegally, whether it be music, games, or movies. There is NO way 14% is a real number.
We're just waiting for Bryan Adams and Celine Dion to put out new albums.
How are they measuring this 14%? The number of people who are downloading from public bittorrent trackers? Then of course it'd be declining, everyone's going underground to get away from The War on Music Listeners.
There is security in numbers. The main reason of the download panic is that everyone downloads music at some point in time. This is the reason that the AA's try to make you believe that Copyright infringement "IS" stealing. Once the numbers dwindle to a managable amount they will still come down hard on those left over.
Small download communities "under the radar" probably set themselves up to be the first under the hammer of the AA's.
It's a bit like the old, "What if nobody pays their taxes anymore" Well, obviously, nobody would actually go to jail. In the end the law is in the eye of the beholder and only valid if enough people believe it is so. Judging to the numbers that download music I would say that it is "NOT" stealing.
My family/friends have mostly quit downloading because I refuse to refer them to (or install) the latest morpheus/limewire/ares/kazaa/genericp2p anymore.
This is my post. See sig above ^
I used to be in the camp that said older stuff was just plain better and there wasn't the same quality of music being released recently. I've come around after listening to a lot of independent stuff recently. I'd now say there's a huge amount of excellent music being released now, but it's just the majority of the population doesn't listen to it. Pop used to be good. It used to be that popular music was The Beatles, now it's garbage with no integrity. I think good music was able to be popular in the past early days of Rock because there wasn't as much of it out yet and the music industry hadn't ingrained itself and produced a system that spews out the lowest common denominator. There are excellent indie artists who make it significantly big, and even some who get huge, but it's not as widespread, and it probably wont ever be again with the fragmentation of genres. So essentially it's not that music these days sucks it's that music consumers have shitty taste.
The main thing is making people aware of the levy. The more I explain it to people, the more outrage I see from them. Why should someone buying 50 CDs to send pictures of their wedding to friends and family have to pay the music industry? It seems retailers are taking action though, I've noticed some of the big Canadian retailers will offer a pack of, say, 50 CDs for about $9 (with the levy in the fine print) and customers are always outraged when that $9 rings in as ~$20 with the $10.50 levy ($0.21 per CD) and other taxes.
One thing I've always found kind of sad is that the CD manufacturing companies are making less (even after markup) then the music industry doing nothing but sitting on their ass. At least DVDs don't have a levy.
...one person responded to the question, "do you download music?"
The answer was, "no."
To the question, "have you bought any music?" the answer was, "no"
To the question, "why?" the answer was, "because there's nothing worth buying or downloading."
This poll has a margin of error or 50%.
Thank you all!
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
From 2000 'till now I went through phases I like to call:
The recoup phase; where I downloaded stuff I had on vinyl, and tape, god how I hate tapes.
The expansion phase; where I experimented with new genres.
The hoarding phase; where I got anything I thought I might possibly ever like now or sometime in the future.
The plateau phase; where I finally realized that I have more music than I will ever listen to, and therefore should be more selective.
Since for the last few years ( decades? ) all the industry puts out has been garbage, at some point all the decent music will either be purchased or copied. Perhaps that point has finally been reached.
( note, this doesnt not apply to indie bands, they still produce good music. )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The new music crap. We all know it.
The music libraries are full. Many people don't need to download as much, because they have most of what they need.
The elections are just days away!
I first misread this as a horrible English/French hybrid singer. Sort of like the character Jean-Luc Picard. And yes, he sings horribly.
Where were you when the voynix came?
We all agreed that copyright infringement was illegal, didn't we? So what are you SCREAMING about all the time?
"Taking a person's work output without compensating them...."
That's an entirely new subject. We've been talking about copyright infringement, not anything involving taking or even work output. Why change the subject? Attention span problem?
Where were you when the voynix came?
Maybe more Canucks are using encryption than in the past?
Just goes to show how bad commercial music has become, first it was music thats "wasnt worth" paying for, now its music thats not even worth downloading illegally for free..
It may be that the music being churned out these days is such crap that downloading has automatically become less. Just a thought, from my personal experience. Gone are the days of Metallica, Stone Temple Pilots, GNR, Pearl Jam, ...list goes on...
i mean seriously....i need my warez at at least 50k or i'm not happy
AC wins Slashdot
Once you have it all you stop downloading.
Survey: excuse me, we're taking a survey. Do you download music from the internet over p2p?
Civilian: Yes I do.
Survey: Here's your court papers, you've just been served. Thank you for your time.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
"They're all types of 'stealing' in most folks minds"
Are you sure on this? Any sort of polls or evidence?
Where were you when the voynix came?
I keep getting into other genres of music. I thought I was done with music 5 years ago, but I just was done with listening to a certain genre or certain group of artists whose albums I would keep buying. I don't listen to the radio or watch TV, so the only times I really hear any new music is from other people. I had been hanging around the same group for a while, but got some new friends and I was exposed to different music. I also learned to play more instruments so I got interested in other types of music as well. Before I only played guitar and wasn't interested in music where guitar wasn't a prominent instrument, but now I am. For 3 years I didn't really buy any new music, but now I'm getting 3 new albums a week. What's my point? Habits change for crazy reasons. There are no trends, people just WANT there to be trends so that they can predict revenue and get investments because of that.
Twinstiq, game news
In the last 6 months Rogers (www.rogers.com) has been actively throttling P2P to the point where I can't use eMule, bittorrent... etc. Bell (www.bell.ca) has also been sending updates to their policies discouraging users from downloading copyrighted material.
Read all the horror stories here: http://www.dslreports.com/forums/23