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Latest Music Piracy Study Overstates Effect of P2P
Blackbeard writes "A new study from pro-business think tank Institute for Policy Innovation claims that music piracy accounts for $12.5 billion in lost output to the US economy. That includes 71,060 lost jobs and $422 million in lost tax revenues... if the figures are accurate. Ars Technica's write-up points out a number of flaws in the IPI's reasoning. 'The study makes for some alarming reading, but it suffers from a few significant flaws. First and foremost, it appears to fall into the "illicit downloads = lost sales" fallacy, the view that each song obtained over a P2P network is a lost purchase.' There's more: 'The IPI study also assesses the increased demand for music if piracy didn't exist and assumes the market would remain as "intensely competitive" as it is today. The problem is that music fans are largely disenchanted with the market. By and large, music fans think that music is too expensive, and that much of what is available isn't very good.'"
If a high-school kid was a massive warez junkie and managed to accumulate 1.5 million dollars worth of pirated software, would the IPI consider that 1.5 million dollars worth of lost sales... from a kid with a maximum $2K-$3K a year income?
Doesn't seem to me they're looking at actual buying potential of the 'offender'... just theoretical maximum revenue lost by the producer.
Group comes out and cites an absurd number (for those who know the reality of the subject) and claims it's the loss due to thing A. Been going on forever with all sorts of things, including music piracy. Lots of people will believe them and clamor to kill piracy, and not listen to people who actually understand the subject because 'they're probably pirates'. This is becoming all too common...
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
But not really. Honestly when is there a study on music piracy that isn't filled with bad assumptions and logical fallacies? I mean, its as if someone is paying them to falsify their study. Nah, who would be dishonest enough to do that? None of these honest companies in the US I'm sure... RIAA
"Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?"
By and large, music fans think that music is too expensive, and that much of what is available isn't very good.
You're damn right. I wouldn't even waste my bandwidth on the vast majority of shit that the record companies are pumping out. But, what am I saying? I'm sure Linday Lohan's next album would sell millions of copies if it weren't for piracy.
What kind of idiot still believes illicit downloads = lost sales. Simple economics, if the price changes (to nothing) then you're going to see a lot more use. . if right now the world downloads 100 million songs a day that doesn't mean that if piracy didn't exist they would instead buy 100 million songs a day. . .It's just such a blatant twisting of facts who wouldn't see through it? If someone hands you a pen and says "it's free" would you take it? Now if someone handed you a pen and said "10 cents please" would you take it? I bet those "free" pens would move quite a bit quicker even though 10 cents isn't a bad price for a pen. There is a huge difference between "free" and. . well. . anything else really.
If you are about to mod me down, keep in mind that this post was most likely sarcastic.
that there is so much of this pandering to the big record labels. Where are the studies showing the truth about piracy, sales, and quality of recorded music?
I'm also ashamed that it has been about 10 years since Napster broke and this is still going on. I feel partly responsible. Time to crank up the anarchy.
I wonder how many of those downloads are for music one already has? I know I had to P2P some songs because some idiot put protection on my CD, so I could not listen to it in my car (my car and "protected" cd's don't work well).
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
This concept that there is 'no good' music out there is a fallacy. While I agree that most of the mainstream music is pre-packaged twinkie pop, there is an entire subset of music (indie and non) that can be found with a little research. And guess what? It's available on iTunes and other services like eMusic (ad infinitum). And that said, with music being such a subjective topic, it's very difficult to say that one artist is 'bad' when they appeal to such broad demographics of teens that absorb them through their radio waves like mindless drones.
"A new study from pro-business think tank Institute for Policy Innovation claims that music piracy accounts for $12.5 billion in lost output to the US economy."
On the other hand, music piracy accounted for $12.5 billion in gained income to the listeners.
Music piracy INCREASES economic productivity because piracy is ULTRA efficient at copying and distributing songs. When consumers get the same (or more) stuff while LESS resources are required (labor and materials), that's an economic gain.
Now, it IS also true that piracy causes economic losses for record companies. But, economic losses for record companies are not necessarily bad for the economy, any more than economic losses for carjackers put in prison are bad for the economy.
To use another example, when the US instituted the Do Not Call list, it caused a lot of losses for companies whose business was paying people to call people who didn't want to be called. And it caused a lot of jobs in that industry to be 'lost'. Was this bad for the economy? NO! All the money that used to get spent interrupting people's dinner just got spent on something else, creating more jobs elsewhere.
So when someone pirates a song instead of paying for it, yes, the record company has a loss, but the economy does not - that money instead gets spent on something else, like a trip to the movies. That's an economic GAIN - the consumer gets to listen to music AND they get to go to the movies, whereas before, when they were paying for extremely inefficient record company distribution, they only got to listen to the music.
paintball
I think the point about the general lack of quality in the music marketplace is right on. Most albums have one or two good songs, so you end up paying $7+ per song that you actually want. My urge to pirate music was drastically lessened when online stores (iTunes was the first one I came across but I don't know if they actually pioneered this or not) started allowing me to buy the specific songs I wanted by themselves. I'm happy to pay 99 cents for a good song. If all the songs on the albums were good then I would buy all the songs and they would make that much more money from me.
There are no "lost jobs". The jobs were shipped abroad years ago.
The 12.5 Billion figure stinks with the smell of excrement because of where they pulled it from.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Assume the average buyer like me spends $15.00 per CD avg. After marketing and retail costs, let's say that an average profit to the music company per unit is a max of 40% or about $6.00, divided by 10-15 tracks per CD or 40 to 60 cents each.
Now assume that I bought those same number of tracks from iTunes. Cost for distribution is nearly zero. Cost for marketing: nearly zero -- and many of the songs I am looking for aren't current albums, so the profit margin on these songs is even higher. Net profit between Apple and the music company and the musician? let's say 90%, shall we?
You figure it out. But the politicians probably never will.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
If unrealized gains were losses, then any product that didn't sell as well as it might would have "lost sales"
Hint: you have to have something before you can lose it.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
As the study points out, a song downloaded over p2p is a lost sale. As we all know, the largest scene for p2p networks is college campuses. College students are also notoriously poor, therefore piracy is their only option, as they cannot afford to purchase music. They are made poorer by the MPAA lawsuits for using p2p networks.
In effect, the MPAA is depriving college students of money they could be using to buy music! The obvious solution? Every time the MPAA catches someone illegally downloading music, GIVE that person $3000 that they can use to purchase music legally. That person will obviously stop using p2p networks and continue to purchase music legally, thereby ensuring significant revenue growth for the MPAA.
I remember me and everyone around me complaining about how annoying and expensive CDs were even before I found out about Napster back in the day. When are these people gonna realize that piracy isn't stealing, we're not stopping them from selling their CDs to anyone except ourselves, and maybe our friends. There's a huge difference here. The reality of the matter is... if they can't come up with any compelling reason why we shouldn't just download music free of cost (quality, REAL legal implications, special features), then so-called 'piracy' (lol ludicrous) is gonna keep growing and growing. You know what I think? Good riddance. We're better off without superstars like Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys making an obscene fortune from shitty music. Start having concerts again, that's how musicians used to make music in the past. It's getting pretty retarded, to the point where music videos are getting removed from Youtube for copyright violation. Maybe Verizon missed the memo that music videos are meant to be used as advertisements, and bands would (at least used to) kill to have it shown on any major broadcast medium because of the sheer visibility it grants them. When did this devolve into such a puddle of bullshit? srsly omg
..is that it's too flippin' loud!
From what I've seen, the people that tend to buy the music that sells in big numbers (pop, top 40 stuff) also tend to only listen to the 1-3 songs that end up being singles off of that album (look at how successful the "NOW" series of CD's has been). Actually buying the CD single version of the song was never a very popular option b/c the price per content was even more unreasonable than the CD's themselves (and they often weren't available). By letting people buy single tracks from iTunes (or any other online music vendor) around the much more reasonable $.99 per song, the "masses" are able pick out whatever the cool song is. I would think that this would cut into CD sales on the same order of magnitude as piracy.
As a side note, music piracy has caused me to buy far more CD's than I otherwise would have. My first exposure to some of my favorite bands has been through (illicit) downloaded tracks, and I often end up buying their entire discography. I know, I know, fuck the RIAA - regardless of their evilness, it's not going to stop me from wanting to own a physical copy of Marquee Moon by Television (shameless plug for the album at the top of my playlist right now).
They assume: Most of what's pirated is clearly of good enough people would buy it anyway quality that it's a direct loss of sale.
The poster assumes: Much of what's pirated is of poor enough quality that no one would buy it but high enough quality that they'd go to the trouble of downloading it.
Both sides have pretty much retreated to their corners and are refusing to meet in a middle. Most likely, the situation is: Piracy, having a lower cost, allows people to consume more than they would otherwise do but that isn't a consumption that would go away if forced to pay the price requested, either. Instead, both retreat to their corners, pointing out how the other one's wrong whilst refusing to look at how their arguments are flawed too. It becomes a somewhat pointless discussion when neither side is capable of considering anything other than their own views.
Yes, there may be a link to lost revenue, but I agree with Ars that is isn't 1:1. Also in this case, it isn't a physical good that once stolen, couldn't be sold again. If someone stole something from a store, it can't be sold by the store and the sale is "lost". Downloads are different in that they equate that the person would have purchased it in the first place. I don't agree with stealing content, but the study is lacking some connections.
So since one song is worth ~1$, that basically means that every person on the planet pirates ~2.1 songs (per year I guess, no timespan given in TFA.)
;)
Mmh, I'm just slightly above the average
So the other 44200 come from what exactly?
I took a look at the study and discovered that the math behind this was well... interesting. All of the formulas are of the form:
(Final Demand in $) * (Allocation factor for a State) * (Category Y Final Demand multiplier for a State [Where Y =Output, Earnings or Employment]).
This is then done over a bunch of states to get a Total figure for each Category.
This really sounds like a bunch of baloohey to me (come on straight up multiplication using shadowy figures to model complex interactions), but I don't really have an economics background.
Any armchair economists want to explain why this is/isn't a completely bullshit approach?
I pirate music all of the time. Mainly older stuff. I don't think that new music is too expensive however. In the past few years I have purchased three or four brand new albums. All it took was $10 and a trip down to K-Mart (since they don't censor CDs). Of course, these were bands that I really like and have enjoyed for years. These were full albums where each song revolved around a central idea and added to the understanding of said idea. These weren't Top 10 artists that throw out a disc with one manufactured single and fifteen more tracks of even more redundant filler. Maybe I'd feel more ripped off if they had been. Then again, I wouldn't be willing to pay too much more than $10 for a CD regardless. You want to talk about a medium that's completely overpriced? DVDs!
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
The only reason they are mouthing about "P2P" is that they've heard about it on the evening news, the American news media isn't about reporting anything of consequence, it's about "buzzwords" like "the internet", "terror" and now "P2P" and "mortgage meltdown" and soon (when the talking heads notice it) "web20". The simple fact that I have to watch foreign news broadcasts to find out whats really going on in the world is pretty damn sad, a good deal of time on "The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric" is dedicated to fluff about some kid in the Midwest who can stand on his head and spit wooden nickels . ;-)..
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
By and large, music fans think that music is too expensive, and that much of what is available isn't very good.
Yet it's good enough to download, apparently. The "music isn't good enough to justify paying for it" argument vanishes in a cloud of hypocrisy when people download the very music they disparage.
When you're a freeloader, any cost is hard to justify, compared to free (beer).
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Slashdot editors are deleting users' comments which mention them by name.
Yesterday, I posted (as A/C) under the Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace Rocket Crashes and Burns story, a sarcastically humorous comment about how two of Slashdot's most despised editors should have to ride on Carmack's remaining rocket for it's next test flight, and today... like "Poof!", my comment and it's parent comment under which I posted to attract more attention to my comment, and all the sibling comments alongside mine under that parent comment... have all completely vanished from the story.
And yes, I did set my threshhold to -1 and searched the entire set of 322 comments and nothing remains of the entire subthread. It vanished like a fart in the wind.
I stopped buying and listening to the big labels' new music years ago. Of course, part of the problem (as seen from their POV) is that I'm just getting to be an old fart who sits around listening to radical conservative talk radio all day. Not (entirely) true... I still enjoy listening to some '80's music or Jazz... on the radio... but I don't like it enough to pay for it, or even download it.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
Another fallacy in the Piracy = Lost Sales logic, is that the pirated / copied song(s) are always available for purchase from a legal channel. What of the listeners looking for a song that is not currently in release (older / import / low demand)? The consumer is likely willing to pay a fair price, or even any price, but there is no seller for what the buyer wants. A case of demand with no supply, except for the ones that don't put money in the licensee's pocket.
V for Vendetta: People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.
I get ALL my music by downloads legally through iTunes (20% for my own enjoyment) or through the PodsafeMusicNetwork (PMN) (80% for my podcast.)
They can keep their opinion to themselves, and they can keep their grubby little fingers off of my network.
(I HAVE noticed that ComCast uploads via FTP of my episodes start at about 194KBps and throttle down to a measly 50KBps by the end of a 25MB file upload. Down is throttled as well but resumes after a couple of minutes. [Fuckers can't even tell the difference between P2P ports and the FTP port.])
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
In the beginning there was... Word of Mouth. A Bard with a Song and performance and got paid from a local Tavern or Hall. Then there was Radio.. Radio provided access to huge amounts of people at once. They could get a taste for the product and then go purchase it because they could not keep the taste. Then there were tapes... Taped Radio was a cheap way of getting music but the music was of a lower standard and so the RIAA never came down.. the advertising was very helpful to them in their view. Music Entertainers got paid still by performance and some small royalties.
Now we have Music that could not be played on Radios or controlled being sent out and listened too by millions of extra ears. Music that has caused the surge of bands from Europe and other places that are not know in the USA. Music that would not be played because RADIO stations cater to people who would PAY for things... thus the music may not have been purchased anyways.
What happens? Music may not be purchased as much, but we have broader bands still roaming the lands getting paid to perform at a Tavern or a Concert Hall. The huge entertainers will still get the money and now we have more Middle Class Entertainers who can make a decent living performing.
Bottom Line: Make good music and people will buy it and they WILL go to see your concerts. Make mediocre Music and people will not do either. More music out there means get Lean and Mean or get destroyed.
We end up with better music across all Genres and we pay less to test the waters.
I can program myself out of a Hello World Contest!!
If someone ships a hard drive full of music to someone else, would that be a federal crime? What would the value of that music be?
So let's say I borrow someone's external hard drive, and copy all the MP3s on it to my hard drive. In just a matter of hours, have I just cost the RIAA millions of dollars?
To be fair, I do think that illegally downloading music does hurt the music industry. But obviously, there is a market there for downloading or iTunes would have failed by now. When Napster burst onto the scene, the music industry should have seen the untapped GOLD mine that is music downloading. Instead, they fought it. They refused to embrace it. Did they think it would just go away? The ability to download and take music with you everywhere has only strengthened the fact that people WANT to listen to music. They still don't get it.
Years ago, I looked into a concept, and someone had it patented already. But here is what the music industry should do:
1. Digitize their massive stockpile of music.
2. Partner with music stores so they carry that music digitally.
3. Price it right.
It would be easy to come up with a tiered pricing model.
A: anything 2 years old or newer: 0.99 per track, or a flat rate per album ($8?)
B: anything 2 to 10 years old: 0.25 per track, or $3 per album
C: anything older than 10 years: 0.10 per track or $1 per album
Think about this... why would people spend hours downloading questionable quality music when they could go into a store and walk away with a CD, DVD, or portable device FULL of music for a decent price? Then, people are in the store - you can sell them DVDs, Tshirts, CDs, etc. You could have a massive digital catalog to choose from. Keep it in the stores, but maybe make the track lists available online so they could submit an order and go in and pick it up. Charge a nominal burning fee for media. You could have "top 100" lists from all genres, people could upload their playlists for others to purchase..... there are LOTS of possiblities.
Sadly, I am sure this will never see the light of day because it requires the "owners" of the music to open their eyes.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I have ALL the downloads I want. They can turn off the internet, close all record ! stores, and the bands can all go work at Mcdonalds, I don't care. I already have downloaded it all, more than anybody, except maybe our beloved Cmdr taco. would I have bought all that? hell no. I used to buy them, that much is true, but no way would I have bought 85 thousand CDs. I would have to buy a whole row of houses to put them all.
These studies do not take into account other economic factors. Correlation studies are such statistical Nonsense, yes people are using p2p to pirate music, and yes music sales are dropping, and yes jobs are being lost in the us economy. This does not prove a relation. One factor is the US economy is taking several big hits. Economic problems often means people are a lot more careful with how they spend their money. That expensive CD doesn't look so good when there are other more important options. Also people are looking at other options for entertainment.
"...it appears to fall into the "illicit downloads = lost sales" fallacy"
Not that slashdot gives a damn, but how can it be called a "fallacy" when it's corollary "every illegal download is a sale" hasn't been proven either?*
*Yes I'm aware of anecdotal evidence. Want to see mine proving the opposite?
>"web20"
Dang. I must have been asleep. When did we go past version 2?
>some kid in the Midwest who can stand on his head and spit wooden nickels.
Youtube linky please?
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
"Advocating lower taxes, fewer regulations, and a smaller, less-intrusive government. Except when it comes to copyright law."
Broken window
Naturally this is not the same context, but it could also be used here. EVEN for the few pirate which COULD have paid for their software, they probably invested their money somewhere else (other goods, banks, whatnot). So yes the music industry lost a "new window" sale, but this certainly was Not LOST to the economy. Or do really the smart-head which make this study that the pirate suddenly took the money which it should have cost them to buy the infriged goods, put it in a waterproof box, and went to bury it somewhere ? And what next ? made a Map with a big X on it ? Wrong movie , pal...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
More like Puff Daddy will have to somehow "get by" with only 13 Bentleys instead of 14.
The summary (and the artiicle, for all I know) is not quite right when it says:
He's just fallen foul of Fingals First Law [*] of chart music - the widely observed principle that the charts always turn to complete rubbish within 5 years of quitting full time education. The cool kids will always be listening to something completely different from what we listened to, and we'll just think the new stuff isn't like music used to be, in the good old days. In turn the cool kids will grow up, and find that the music they like has been superseded.
The point is, it's older fans who think that much of what's available now is rubbish. There is a constant supply of new fans ready to be programmed with the new stuff.
Of course, not all of them will buy the new stuff, but that's another issue - and the posters above have covered that pretty well!
[*] I just made that law up right there! Don't expect to find it in the textbooks till next week at least. We're only at Internet 2.0, you know.
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
that does not mean i am on the side of RIAA or something, but thats just the point. I been looking for a new ride, If I could get on off Pirate Bay I would down load it in a heartbeat.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
This think tank is definitely in the business of bias. Here's one that concluded tax cuts would not primarily benefit the rich, but Congress didn't buy it. Here's one cited in Forbes saying that insurance deficiencies are due to government regulation--which Michael Moore's "Sicko" exposes as a horrible untruth. It's easy to find studies like this from IPI. They use Free Market rhetoric to influence lawmakers, but it's that variety of the Free Market that is anticompetitive.
The music industry, as everyone here likes to say, relies on an outdated business model, but one part of their business model that is quite current and up to date is how it seeks protection through government influence. Sometimes Congress likes to hear distorted studies, because it helps them to have excuses. That's the real issue here.
The music industry created simplified music and sold it for a high price. The market is now equalizing. A Beethoven symphony costs the same as a Jay-Z record, but people will not listen to Jay-Z for centuries and find him inspiring. They will listen until the trend is over.
The music that the music industry has pushed upon us is simpler, dumber, and more repetitive than what we would be buying otherwise. Now that people do not have to pay for it, they do not, because they're only going to listen to it for a few weeks until something new comes out. This market force is causing them losses, true, but these are losses from a model of inflated value that they created.
If calabasa squash cost $0.79 and I start selling a calabasa squash with Elvis Presley's face carved into it for $79.00, I have created a model of inflated value. If someone else comes along with a metal stamp that carves Elvis's face into a calabasa squash, they have deflated my inflated value model. It is hard to argue that I lost anything, since the value definition of my product was inflated in the first place.
I distrust any society that measures what is good in economic terms. If we look at the file-sharing debacle through the eyes of an artist, we see a situation where a few overpaid rockers are going to lose out so that many lesser-known artists of quality can have a chance to gain that share of the audience. Although it may ruin the imaginary model of existence in which anything that earns money is important, this change in the music industry will better the lot of real music in a world of plastic fakes.
technical writing / development
It's obvious that it is more beneficial to pay money to college lecturers and professors (social enablers) than to A&R men, marketing execs and IP lawyers, none of whom produce any tangible benefit to society.
So the conclusion is obvious; this think tank is telling the exact opposite of the truth. The replacement of music sales by the P2P distribution of free music would hugely benefit the US economy. The "loss" due to "piracy" is actually the start of a potential leveraged economic gain.
Pining for the fjords
You can't take the sky from me...
I take issue with this:
The problem is that these sentiments are constants. Sure, ask any given person in any given year and they'll tell you that they think music is too expensive. I think Ferraris are too expensive, too. Yet the music industry still manages to post sales of billions per year, iTunes' growth is accelerating, and the overall health of the music industry tends to be a good barometer for the rest of the economy. We (as a collective group of consumers) may say that music is too expensive, just as generations past have claimed... yet we keep buying.
Regarding the sentiment that music is declining in quality: that, too, is a constant. Again, ask any given person in any given year and they're liable to say the same thing. Think music hit its peak in the 70s? Go back a few years and you'll find the crowd who thought things started going wrong in the late 60s. You could find folks in the 1870s who thought that the music of the 1850s was the pinnacle of quality. And, bringing us back to modern times, look at the Top 100 tracks for any year in the 1960s or 1970s, and you'll see that it, too, was 90% crap, just as today -- but we filter that out and tend to remember the good stuff, or the stuff that had emotional significance to us. This is simply how nostalgia works and it's not a suitable explanation of decreasing music sales or the increase of piracy -- particularly since the Big Champagne chart of top-pirated tunes tends to match up nearly exactly with legitimate downloads. When we pirate, we want the stuff that's hot now. The majority of music piracy is not being performed by people who like today's music just fine.
On that point, I am likely to get several replies from people who insist that they only pirate music from [insert your favorite decade here] and that they do pirate because today's music is crap, thankyouverymuch. Bully for you if that's the case -- but you're not part of the trend.
I am really not sure if Ars Technica simply doesn't understand this, or if they are being intellectually dishonest in an effort to prove a point. I've noticed that most of their articles on piracy have a pro-piracy slant and tend to come off as editorials rather than reporting (they are getting nearly as bad as The Inquirer), so I fear the latter.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Music that people download does not mean that they would purchase it. Hypothetical situation: A person downloads the entire collection of [insert your favourite band who's released >10 CDs here]. Does this mean that if downloading were not available to them, they would go out and purchase every single album they ever released? NO! What they (and many other people who download music) probably do, is buy one or two albums to support the artist, and download the rest. Sure it's "lost" revenue for the artists, but big labels and their bands don't need the money, and most of their income is brought in through concerts, not CD sales anyways. Smaller artists, who aren't already bazillionaires, they may need your sales. So buy an independant artists CD today.
01110000 01010111 01101110 00110011 01100100
No, I didn't read every post in this article, so I hope this isn't a dupe.
s .php?id=9735
Interesting link about concerts ( and giving away free CD's ) -
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_detail
Saying "piracy" cuts into sales ignores the fact that a whole lot of file sharing involves music the record companies won't sell anyone for any price. What about all the hundreds of b-sides, remixes, demos, etc that are not in print? That was what I mainly used Napster for, grabbing digitized copies of music I used to have on LP and cassette that was never put on CD, or was once on CD singles but was out of print by the time I wanted to purchase it. The most disappointing thing about iTunes to me is it's just the same old stuff already on CDs. Why don't the record companies open their archives and put out of print music online? It would cost them almost nothing to have digital copies available to download.
Last I heard concert attendance and revenue were down or stagnating. Since you can't pirate concerts, it would seem to indicate that people just don't find the music being produced today compelling enough to spend an ever increasing amount of money on. I'm sure concert promoters would like to have something like file sharing to blame poor attendance on, but they're stuck with the sad fact that demand for their product, at the price they're asking, isn't what it once was. The RIAA needs to realize they're in the same position.
Even if all that "lost" money were real, if every download were a lost sale, which industries would that extra money come from? Which industries are currently the lucky recipients of the money that the downloaders are saving on music purchases? I have never heard the music industry say which other industries they would expect to lose revenes and thousands of jobs in their place. Funny, that.
I'm sick of this music guys crying about their losses. This is as stupid as talking about the losses that human inovation implicates. This is pure populism and demagogic thought. Of course there will be losses as cars brought losses to trains, as plains brought to ships, as plastic brought to ceramic, as any other kind of innovation. Internet ruined many businesses of the past... so what?? Why should music be exception? The way is through adaptation not illegalization. Sorry for the spelling i'm not fluent in english.
Propaganda machines!
Pfft... Think-tank my crusty ass. The only thing they "think" about is who they can sell out to.
A real think tank would start off a report on this topic with the truth.
"Recording companies that hide behind RIAA are misguided by employing armies of lawyers, instead of one or two good innovative entrepreneurs".
"P2P networks are the definitive distribution model of the digital economy".
"Recording companies that hide behind RIAA either are so out of touch with reality they'd rather replace the internet with telegraphs than take the effort to lead the music industry".
"Recording companies that hide behind RIAA need not worry, where they lack vision others are more than willing to pick up the slack."
"All that recording companies that hide behind RIAA really need to do is to sit down and shutthefuckup."
That think-tank sounds more like a stink-tank to me, they reek of lies and inaccuracies.
Hope is the currency of fools
Submitted too soon - meant to add a " ;) " and mention that I used to have a T-shirt w/ that slogan...
The problem with this whole issue is that the economic impact of "piracy" is 100% impossible to measure.
The RIAA is wrong to assume that everyone who downloads a song would have otherwise paid for it, and to claim that as a lost sale. They also don't account for people who hear a downloaded track and decide to buy the album (or individual track(s) via iTunes).
Downloaders are wrong to claim moral justification simply because they are unwilling to pay the set price for music. They are also wrong to assume that downloaders WOULDN'T have otherwise paid for it, and claim zero lost sales.
Both sies' arguments are full of specious, unverifiable claims that do nothing to work towards a mutually-acceptable compromise. No meaningful progress will happen until both sides are honest with themselves and each other.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
File sharing stimulates demand.
Most of the demand is satisfied by further file sharing.
Some small percent of the demand is satisfied by purchase.
In other words, a teenager downloads a ton of music, much more than she would buy if that was the only way to get the music.
The increased availability caused by file sharing gives her an increased appetite for more music.
The bottom line is that file sharing can actually cause an increase in sales, but only indirectly, and to a much less degree than the amount of sales theoretically lost due to the file sharing.
Spin that any way you want.
These imaginary losses are all lies. Even if assumed true, the monies were never in the American economy in the first place! Vertically integrated international monopolies control all this type of supposed 'intellectooool property on the planet for practical purposes. The American or other artists never get paid their due but for the thieving greedy bloodsuckin monopolists that hide behind them while they rape the public. The moooosic is produced in foreign countries using foreign labor on foreign machines. It is sold by international distribution networks..and that is if you are one of those that want a real physical product for your hard earned money. The legal 'download' model costs the sellers no real money to provide an infinitum of the nauseating dreck that passes for 'music' these days; and all the revenues raised therefrom often flow over international lines that only touch the American sucker consumer in the last leg of a long journey that usually begins in some low wage hellhole like China or Myanmar or Indonesia where the monopolists operate cheek by jowl and maybe in the same building with folks that are producing black market copies by the billion. Of course the RIAA does not have seventy five million troops to enforce their blackmail on their real home country China. After all, the Chinese might defend themselves...or they might stop cooperating in the monopolists monstrous rip off of the American music consumer. Far easier to shake down defenseless grandmothers and ten years old children who often don't even own a 'pooter. Oh yes and by the way, the money paid for this atrocious noise never stays in the United States. Heavens, the robbers might have to pay taxes on it like the poor American citizen suckers that they have been scamming for so many years. That money goes to the absentee robber barons in island no tax money havens reserved for the rich.....Ca(ve)yman Islands, Isle of Sau(c)k in the English Channel owned by the Queen of England as her personal property.... Yeah, betcha you did not know that the owner of all the cigarettes makers in the world that bring you death in a little red and white box of twenty coffin nails is also her, her ugliness. So you see that this 'music' money is and never was in the American economy. It ceased being American when you
the 'so called music' consuming sucker moved your American money to the pocket of the alien monopolists.
Taking the Barry Bonds defense, how many of these users who downloaded songs via a P2P application "knowingly" were downloading songs illegally? Apparently the Feds can't even beat that one. Now, you IPI accountants, figure that into your numbers and no sales were lost. The IPI, MPAA and all Virgin Records, Tower Records and Record Town stores are probably more interested in catching my friend from 15 years ago who could walk in and out of a music store in 10 minutes with 50 CDs in his jacket.
As if people don't spend their money on music, they don't spent it at all? The jobs and taxes aren't lost, they are just generated in other parts of the economy. Most likely local entertainment, where the money does a whole lot more good for the economy anyway.
i'd like to know how many lost jobs / taxes (oh and revenue as well) is the direct result of discounted music such as bargin bins, I believe the supermarkets sell music cheaper - how many lost jobs do THEY cause and who can we sue.
Yes, but they're paid not to see through it.
First and foremost, it appears to fall into the "illicit downloads = lost sales" fallacy, the view that each song obtained over a P2P network is a lost purchase.'
Second and foresecond, it appears to fall into the "let go = no workey no more" fallacy; the view that each person who loses his or her job never gets a new one.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
USENET is peer to peer. It and DNS are among the two oldest peer to peer networks on the Internet. There is no central USENET server. Posts sent to one USENET peer are transferred to ones adjacent to it in the network via NNTP (formerly via UUCP), and then sent onwards to other peers that carry those groups until every peer in the network has them.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I don't know about any one else here, but I stopped buying music the day I subbed to Sirius radio back in the middle of '03. The ONLY thing that I've bought since then is Rush's new *album* and only because they released it on a 2-lp vinyl set. Between Sirius, my relatively large collection of LP's plus my CD's, I don't want or care for anything else, especially the new crap out there.
Thank you!
Attention slashdot editors: "Latest Music Piracy Study Overstates Effect of P2P" is not news. It's exactly the same *old* crap, again. What's next, "Sky still blue, film at 11"?
If it said "Latest Music Study is Completely Reasonable About P2P", *that* would be "news". Because it would be, you know, NEW.
It is no surprise to many of us that the RIAA was Number One as the most hated company last year in the USA. Lies, law suits, drivel music... Why should we buy any of the crap they offer us? I don't support piracy. I also don't support the current music. I vote with my wallet: I buy movies instead!
. 13 billion is not that much divide by the population of the US (301,139,947) it is 43 dollar per person. (the world would be more appropriate of course since the sales and copying is global 2 dollars per person).
you multiply anything out by a lot of people you get a big number.
2. I would also like to know what the cost to society of copy write is consumers have to pay more for there music because of less competition, DRM must cost time and money to produce and use. Paying lawyers is expensive.
3. The tax oh please, the government also looses taxes when you help a friend for free instead of charging them (which is what p2p is) I am sure that in general it would cost the US government much more the 500Mil if every favor you did was taxed.
4. Although I don't copy song or buy them I don't consider p2p steel (it maybe wrong) stealing to me is when you take something and deprive the other person of its use. This does not happen in copying files. What happens is you are depriving the record company of the opportunity to make money of you. Here is an analogy:
I walk past McDonald's and think I would really like a hamburger. I go home make a hamburger (say of equal or lesser quality) an eat it. I have just stopped McDonald's making money of me I "stole" there idea of having a hamburger. In my opinion I have done nothing wrong they have no right to make me pay. Ok not copying music seems more wrong because all they do is sell information but still not stealing.
What I also think is wrong:
* I also think that 50 years after the artists death to keep the copy write.
* The distribution of profit to the artist and record company.
* The justification of invasion of privacy for enforcing these laws.
* The wasted CPU cycles on my computer that I have to pay for to enforce these laws.
* Zoning items so they can make the most profit, once I buy a copy I should be able to sell it to anyone (as long as I don't listen to it anymore)
* lots of other things that I don't think are relevant to this discussion.
5. The assumption that more music would be produced is not an obvious one, you need to prove that artists and music are not being adequately compensated. People do music for a lot of reason not just money you only have to compensate them just enough to cover the opportunity cost (not monopoly profit).
6. In my opinion the best way of stopping copy of music is to make prices reasonable and easy to use. Although I have never used p2p I assume it is cheaper, and easier to use, and has more selection than legitimate means.
Since the marginal cost of distributing each copy is zero they may be able to more money by selling each song cheaper. 1 cent a song people would by thousands.
MY think-tank says P2P downloading has increased the potential earnings of the music industry by 9.3 trillion dollars!
;) The odds on this seem comparable to the odds of getting paid for every single download, so ours is just as accurate as theirs.
:(
:)
Only catch is catching every downloader and getting the full statutory value from every song
There is that elusive missing step before profit, usually involving WORK
Sounds like have MUCH more to gain than they lose so you are helping them!!
Why do think-tanks always seem more tank than think?
Institute for Policy Innovation = IFPI = International Federation of the Phonographic Industry
Coincidence?
Maybe not directly, but definitely indirectly. For example, I'm a huge Pink Floyd fan. I started getting into them around 1990, which was the end of an extremely frustrating musical era with all the crap that was churned out in the 1980's. I had gotten so disgusted with music that I honestly never listened to the radio. A buddy of mine had The Wall, though, and I was hooked. He gave me a copy of his tape, and over the years since, I've bought almost every Pink Floyd album there is, except some of the crappy early ones with Syd Barrett. I've also seen them twice in concert.
Another example. When I was in college, like most college students, I was dirt poor. I've always liked Billy Joel, and another buddy of mine invested his disposable income in a CD player (still pretty new at the time) and almost all of Billy Joel's CDs. Of course, I couldn't afford all that, so I bought a bunch of blank cassettes and he made copies for me. Fast forward a few years, and I now am the proud owner of all of Billy Joel's albums, and I've seen him twice in concert, too. (If you're ever lucky enough to get the chance to see either Pink Floyd or Billy Joel in concert, incidentally, go.)
Another example. Just today, a friend of mine was listening to a Lazlo Bane CD I bought. (They're the guys who did the theme to the television show Scrubs, and their stuff is very good.) He had never even heard of the group before. At best, most people I run across are familiar with the theme to Scrubs ("I'm no Superman..."), but they'd never buy a whole Lazlo Bane CD because of that little snippet of song you hear on Thursday nights. I'll be honest, I seriously doubt he's going to rush out and buy a Lazlo Bane CD or go to a concert. But at least now he knows who they are, and if someone mentions Scrubs, he'll probably say something like, "Oh yeah, the theme was done by Lazlo Bane. I've listened to their CD and thought it was pretty good," and thus the "buzz" of the Bane has been bumped up by a bit.
I could keep going, but you get the idea. The collective effect of all of this is that CDs do sell better. Artists and bands do become more famous. Concerts do get attended that otherwise wouldn't have.
Plus, that's also neglecting the money that artists and bands make through increased exposure that have little to do with CD sales and concerts directly, such as through endorsement deals, magazine articles and interviews, non-CD merchandise, etc.
Music industry could have provided us with an encyclopedic access to music of the world thorough history, and gathered knowledge to go with; could have developed fantastic tools to explore our heritage. Instead it let other people do it, and if anything only acts as a Mafia toward them.
"Music industry" has made itself synonymous of "music". Well, no. They have gone too far representing only the smallest common denominator to now pretend establish the rules by which music will live and prosper.
If you think about it - They claim that the record company doesnt sell a $15 CD and they lay off workers. Okay, fine. So lets look at what is gained by piracy. THe evil thief has purchased a computer with enough storage for the media, high speed internet access (ironically, likely from the came coporation who he is stealing the music from), and undoubtedly an ipod or other mp3 player for all his music.Do any of his extra purchases contribute to the sales of the companies manufactuing any if those items? How is apple's stock in the past two years? Good?
I wonder how many of those downloads are for music one already has? I know I had to P2P some songs because some idiot put protection on my CD, so I could not listen to it in my car (my car and "protected" cd's don't work well).
The problem is even greater for those wanting to put it on their Zen, Zoon, and most importantly i-Pod.
Most people no longer take original CDs on the road anymore but instead take a burned copy to prevent loss due to breakage and theft. The added advantage is playing only the good tracks and leaving the junk off the compilation. Obviously DRM is consumer unfriendly and makes the product a lower value.
This lower value product has poisoned the pot of anything on the retail shelves. You just don't know if it will work without doing online research first. As long as you are online, you can get a working copy. In the end we get blamed for the problem.
The truth shall set you free!
DVD sales are still rising...and DVDs are just as easy to pirate as CDs.
Maybe if CDs were a bit cheaper they might sell more (right now they're more expensive than DVDs).
PS: Just five minutes ago I downloaded a song somebody recommended. I deleted it after a half listen - didn't like it.
In some countries I could be dragged into court for doing that, and so could the person who "shared" it.
Does that make sense to anybody?
No sig today...
My hatred of the RIAA is now greater than my desire to be legal.
It's not just the DMCA and all the terrible lawyering, lying and lobbying, it's the way they consistently rip off the artists. If the artists are suffering it's because of the record companies and their contracts, not the people who download CDs.
I actually know some real, famous musicians and heard their storr about making one of the top 100 selling albums of all time and not making a penny from it - the record company took it all.
nb. This isn't something new, it was back in the '70s - Yes, they've been doing it since the '70s!
If I ever meet the musicians I listen to I'll happily give them a tenner, buy them a pint, or whatever. But I will not support the RIAA or record industry in any way shape or form.
They bring this upon themselves.
No sig today...
[Begin site plug] (I don't have anything to do with these sites except that I like them, but this sounds pluggish.)
Magnatune's free versions are MP3, if you pay you get your choice of several formats, including a couple lossless ones and mailed CDs. Jamendo gives you the same stuff whether you paid or not. They both let the buyer set their prices (minimum $5 on Magnatune). Neither of them require exclusive contracts from their artists. (I've seen some albums on both.)
IIRC, each site keeps half of what you give them, and the other half goes to the artist. (Compare that to 10 - 20 cents per dollar for the big labels.) Sounds like a good deal for everyone to me.
[End site plug]
I currently don't have a lot of money, so I shamelessly listen to music for free from those sites once in a while, knowing that after college, I'll pay for all the ones I like. Since they let me listen to it, the music will constantly remind me of their existence, so I'm not likely to forget to pay up.
By the way, if you like instrumental classical, check out Rob Costlow (solo piano).
This is not a signature.
The amazing thing about these types of articles is that they accredit the demise of the music industry to p2p downloading, but they don't mention what is perhaps even more detrimental: cd burning. let's face it, p2p is a pain in the ass most of the time. but walk into a microcenter where they sell 100 CD-Rs for less then $10, and guess what - you think those are all to burn pictures of the kiddies? burn baby burn.
The decline of the music industry is really a perfect exercise in economics. Someone oughtta write a book.
1. there are a lot other things to do with your time than listen to music. Like typing on slashdot.
2. downloading supplants the entire distribution system of music. If cds sold for $3.00 they'd sell more units.
3. there are too many cds. This is what started to kill the records industry in the mid '90s. Too many releases, too many discs, too many choices.
4. the "reissue" boom is over. in the mid 90s everything started getting "reissued" to cd. People dumped their vinyl. Go to a used records store. It's hard to find good used vinyl these days. Why? scarcity. it was dumped, it was scarffed and now there's just slim pickins.
enough. thanks
www.itjerk.com
...water remains wet.
if there was no piracy many more people would be out of jobs. think of the agents who crack down on the pirates? what would happen to them? if someone steals a $12.00 cd from a multimillionaire, no harm done; but if the person who protects the millionaire's songs from being stolen is not needed, he is out of a job (he is the one that needs the money anyway)
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
In a way, piracy is partially responsible for your defection from the RIAA's customer base. The RIAA's just trying to defend their IP in the most cost-efficient way possible, but unfortunately that leads to some really dodgy lawsuits that negatively affect their image. They are also forced to try enforcement aids like DRM, copy protection, and watermarking, all which cost more money and more potential customers. Indirect costs really start to add up.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
I was talking to Steve Swindells today and asked him about his 1980 album, Fresh Blood, which still remains my all-time favourite LP. It made Billboard's Top 100 list, so it wasn't entirely obscure. Here's what Steve had to say about the possibility of it ever getting released on CD:
Sorry - re Fresh Blood, I made enquiries and it's now mouldering with Altlantic Records, who own the rights for perpetuity, of course.
And they have no plans to put it out as a CD. At least they know of its existence in some vault!
If even 10% of those of us who put that album on Billboard's Top 100 list bought a CD copy, that would be a tidy chunk of change... but the label doesn't see it that way.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
This article says that Hip Hop and Grunge killed the music inustry.r oatthroughout-major
http://www.helium.com/tm/483285/music-industry-th
It's amazing how arrogant and greedy record companies and certain artists are. They're like some price fixing cartel. Music just isn't worth as much as it was, but they seem to be blind (or just ignorant) to that and feel they should still make millions just because that is what has happened before.
Industries come and go, sometimes they just slump until the next big thing. The music industry seems like it's on the downward slope, it may die off but I doubt it because there will always be good musicians making music people are willing to pay to hear.
Anything that doesn't change and adapt will fail. Unless it's legislated to keep it afloat. Imagine record companies being subsidised by government for pirated music. *Shudder*
You don't even need to resort to vinyl that never appeared on CD before. Even older CDs don't get republished once the record label rans out of stock. Although the CD master, the booklet/cover has already been done and probably is still available somewhere.
Last year I decided to go through my vinyl collection and by the CD version of my favorite vinyl records. Making a long story short, although I knew there once was a CD version out, my music store couldn't order it for me: "Out of stock, will not be republished." I was lucky to find a used copy from one of my favorite artist (a band called Zed Yago (sorry, german Wiki entry, no english version available)), but clearly not the artist nor the distribution chain profited from that sale, although the price I payed was in the range of any new, standard music CD out there in the stores (and it was worth it).
Of course, bands like this one don't sell copies in the ranges of The Beatles, but I guess with today's technology and given the fact that concepts like books on demand already exist, there should be a way for me to order a brand new CD that gets manufactured after I ordered it.
[quote] 71,060 lost jobs and $422 million in lost tax revenues.[/quote]
First of all,there are plenty of jobs out there.Good honorable jobs.Statistically speaking Americans change careers every 6 years or so anyway.Get a haircut and get a real job,music industry scumbags!
Second,our constitution provides for the federal gov't. to gain necessary monies by laying tariffs on imports.(yeah,thats right income tax is constitutionally illegal)They don't need the tax money they collect now! They are not authorized to have "programs" to provide services that eat tax dollars as they do.All they have to do is run a post office,protect the borders,regulate interstate commerse and a few other benign tasks that don't include welfare,income tax,communications regulation,healthcare or any of the other unconstitutional jobs it took on to buy votes from the weak.
Therefore "Kein Mitleid Fur Die Mehrheit",I don't care about either complaint,do you?
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
You shared your CD with somebody?!?! You bastard! I'm afraid I'm gonna have to report you to the RIAA, mister. Say goodbye to your happy life. :P
The reason why the music industry can get artists to sign contracts that can have the artist sell 8 million records (at $15 a pop) and still end up in hock to the record company is that artists feel that the only way to get wide distribution and fame is to get 'a contract'. Now, if P2P allows new artists a way to get world-wide recognition without having to sign away the rights to their work, the record companies are going to start getting non-monopoly pricing for their services.
It's actually a lot like the Microsoft/Linux battle -- just not as obvious (or quite as organized on the non-monopoly end of the battle).
(( and, yeah, a starving student with $20 in his pocket for the weekend isn't going to cost the music industry $400 in lost sales by downloading 20 obscure tracks via the Gnutella network -- especially if the downloads eventually mean that he saves up the money to buy 2-3 records because of those 20 downloads. ))
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
The situation is even worse. It's like scientists who apply a more lenient standard towards pro data, as opposed to con. You'll notice this forums reaction towards data that goes counter to groupthink. Now note their reaction towards supportive data even when it comes from the same organizations. Different levels of standards instead of treating both equally.