Slashdot Mirror
Canada No Pirate Nation: Global Leader In Music Download Sales
An anonymous reader writes "The IFPI, the global recording industry association, recently released
its Recording
Industry in Numbers 2012,
which provides detailed sales data from countries around the world.
While CRIA talks
about
'rebuilding the marketplace,' the industry's own data indicates that
Canada already stands among the global leaders in digital music sales.
Michael Geist digs into the
data and finds that Canadians purchased more single track
downloads than Germany or Japan, and more than double the sales in
France, despite the fact that each of those countries has far larger
populations. In fact, Canadian sales were larger than all the sales
from Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, the
Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden combined. Not only is the Canadian
digital market far larger than virtually every European
market, it continues to grow faster than the U.S. digital music
market as well. In fact, the Canadian digital music market has grown
faster than the U.S. market for the past six consecutive years."
And the recording industry is still hungry for money.
As a Canadian, I think I can speak for the country when I say that the reason we're a global leader in music download sales is that we feel so damn guilty for pirating all that stuff that we make amends by buying it.
Plus, how else can we push Justin Bieber to the top? Don't tell me non-canucks actually purchase his stuff, too?
We're just so damn polite. Sorry for the cuss words.
cheers,
cheers,
We have incredibly lax laws compared to many places; the reason that such services don't tend to work here is simple.
Negotiating the licenses and contracts costs some money
Canada has 1/10th the population of the U.S. so it often isn't worth it.
Netflix, for instance, works perfectly well in Canada but has 1/10th the library of the U.S. version.
Piracy = increased sales? Canadians are one of the few who are protected under the law and can download as much pirated product as they like. The studies suggest that piracy leads to more purchases of the same type of material (music, movies, etc) so it can be true that we both pirate and purchase at the same time.
There are Canadian Content rules which specify material which is deemed Canadian Content (% written/produced/performed by a Canadian) must receive x amount of airtime. It's been complained about for a number of years by people in the music industry, however it has given airtime to great artists like The Tragically Hip, Paul Brandt, I Mother Earth, and George Canyon so it's both good and bad.
Personally, I find CBC (especially CBC Music) to be a goldmine for music - free streaming of a pile of concerts, podcasts, you name it.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
I know people who pirated movies or video games the first time that were there on opening day to buy the sequels. People will support what they know is awesome because they want it to continue and they know that it will not continue if the makers can't feed their families and pay mortgages.
They have rather less interest in keeping rich executives rich. Or for that matter, even in keeping rich artists rich.
Piracy = increased sales? Canadians are one of the few who are protected under the law and can download as much pirated product as they like. The studies suggest that piracy leads to more purchases of the same type of material (music, movies, etc) so it can be true that we both pirate and purchase at the same time.
Bear in mind we're "protected" because we pay a levy on blank media - effectively it's impossible for a Canadian to "illegally download" material because we've already paid for it when we bought the hard drive.
IP enforcement in Canada chases after the seeders, because that part is still illegal.
I'd account a fair bit of the sales increase to people ditching cable - between iTunes and Netflix, I can watch every show I want for substantially less than what cable would be. (I still get my internet and phone through the cable company because I loathe Telus with a fiery passion, so the cable company is content.)
IP enforcement in Canada chases after the seeders, because that part is still illegal.
Citation needed. Have you heard about any uploading cases in the last 5-8 years?
;).
Seems like the prolific US propaganda and lobbying on the subject has skewed your view (as with many Canadians). A precedent was set saying it was not illegal (BMG Canada Inc. v. JohnDoe). The appeal (which passed) stated that the legality still needs to be decided in court. To my knowledge it hasn't been tested yet (most likely due to the current legislation giving it a chance to go through as legal).
The Royal Canadian Mounted police's policy is: "Piracy for personal use is no longer targeted".
We covered this quickly in a law class (back in 2007) and the current state then was "not illegal". In order to make it illegal would require a risky court case (which I haven't heard of to date) or legislation (which the RIAA keeps trying to push in Canada and the Conservatives address periodically).
In conclusion: you have no excuse to be a leecher. Start seeding like the rest of us
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
When I first read the summary, a red flag went off for me - and it was the fact that we're *only* talking about digital sales - and even worse, the summary talks about one subcategory of digital sales: "single track downloads". The summary seems to have ignored physical sales of music and whole album digital sales. My first thought was to question how the Canadian balance of physical to digital sales differed from other nations.
Also, talking about how the Candian digital sales is growing faster (percentage-wise) than the US could also be a red herring if the Canadian market for digital sales was very low five years ago. (Example: if you start with 10,000 digital sales per year five years ago, you can get 100% growth each year and still have lower overall digital sales than a country that was selling 1,000,000 sales five years ago and had 10% growth each year.) In fact, the MichaelGeist information confirms that this is what happened - i.e. that the Canadians digital sales numbers started much lower - when he says "Canada seems likely to pass the U.S. on per capita single track downloads in about 18 months". So, the chart Michael Geist produces showing six years of faster-than-US sales growth in "single track downloads" is really a chart showing that Canada is still playing catch-up. Also, I wonder how "single track downloads" differs from "digital sales" in general.
According to the Norway sample data (http://www.ifpi.org/content/library/RIN-samplepage-2012.pdf), digital sales account for 45% of total revenue and "single track downloads" accounts for 18% of digital sales. This means in Norway that "single track downloads" accounts for only 8.1% of revenue. This also raises a red-flag for me because it makes me think that "single track downloads" was a subcategory that Geist could seize on to paint a rosy picture, even if the total picture was different.
I've also noticed that a lot of comments on the Slashdot thread seem to think we're talking about "total sales" when were talking only about one component of music sales: "digital music sales" or "single track downloads".
As much as I hate when the music industry spins numbers (for example, assuming that one act of piracy equals one lost sale to calculate the amount of money lost to piracy), we should also acknowledge that the pro-piracy crowd spins their numbers as well. I'd look at the actual numbers, but the entire report is only available if you pay.
Well, there's this:
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6456/125/
But did you also know that the Conservative Party of Canada lobbied the US government to bump up Canada's position on that list?
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1048993--leaks-show-u-s-swayed-canada-on-copyright-bill
The cables, from the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa, even have a policy director for then industry minister Tony Clement suggesting it might help U.S. demands for a tough copyright law if Canada were placed among the worst offenders on an international piracy watch list. Days later, the U.S. placed Canada alongside China and Russia on the list.
Facts are fun!