Slashdot Mirror
Music Industry Thriving In an Era of File Sharing
levicivita notes ZeroPaid coverage of a recent study by the UK music industry's own economist showing that overall UK music industry revenues were up in 2008 (study, PDF). The study is titled "Adding up the Music Industry for 2008" and it was authored by Will Page, who is the Chief Economist at PRS for Music, a UK-based royalty collecting group for music writers, composers, and publishers. From ZeroPaid: "[T]he music industry is growing increasingly diverse as music fans enjoy a wide range of platforms to hear and consume music. Sales of recorded music fell 6% for example, digital was up 50% while physical dropped 10%, but concert ticket sales grew by 13%. In terms of what consumers spent on music as a whole last year, this surprisingly grew by 3%."
The recording industry has lost [CARL-SAGAN] Billions and BILLIONS [/CARL-SAGAN] due to those Evil Content Pirates(tm)!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
How much greater would the reported growth be without losses due to piracy?
I'm guessing it would be something like 3 billion percent.
Required reading for internet skeptics
The money flow is going the way it should. More about the artists and less about the publishers. And at better prices. To gain recognition, artists aren't required to sign away all their rights to a giant publisher anymore.
Wow. I guess piracy really doesn't hurt the digital content industries.
Oh wait. Two caveats:
(1) "Sales of recorded music fell 6%" (which means other digital industries that don't involve giving concerts shouldn't expect comparible results).
(2) A recent (July 13, 2009) study of UK piracy says "The analyst firm published a study on Monday that showed the numbers of those who regularly file-shared had dropped by a quarter between December 2007 and January 2009. The trend was particularly pronounced among 14-18-year-olds -- at the earlier date, 42 per cent were file-sharing at least once per month but at the latter date only 26 per cent were doing so."
Source: http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jul2009/gb20090713_439306.htm
Ticket sale money doesn't line the same pockets as CD sale money (for one, the artist gets a cut).
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
From what I remember, the same increase was seen throughout the industry when Napster was at its peak.
The industry should be thankful for being able to reach a larger audience without having to pay the giant advertising costs!
An album hasn't turned a profit in twenty years. Otherwise they would have to pay royalties to the artists, which would ruin their business model.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The RIAA et al. is screaming about piracy not because money is not lining into pockets. The money is only being lined into the wrong pockets, and they don't like it.
Executives only exists to protect themselves. The facts don't lie.
I like how both the article and the Slashdot submission completely ignore that file-sharing has dropped in the UK, especially among teens. Though I know this was posted on Slashdot to give pro-pirates the idea that sales are thriving in spite of piracy, this story doesn't disprove the effect piracy has on sales--if anything, it bolsters the idea that sales go up when piracy goes down.