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Survey Suggests P2P Users Buy More Music
elashish14 writes "A new survey commissioned by Google suggests that music listeners who utilize P2P filesharing services buy 30% more music than non-sharers. The survey also probed users' opinions on enforcement practices. Users were strongly against either throttling or disconnecting users' internet services, but the majority suggested also that search engines should block access. 52% of Americans also said that downloading infringing content should be a punishable offense."
frosty piss
Not all people are dumbasses, and some actually prefer to make sure that what they end up blowing their money is not complete garbage. Is that a crime?
I hated Far Cry 2, thought it was a terrible game and regretted buying it. A few weeks back I saw a stream of Far cry 3 and thought it looked fun so torrented it. This lead to be really enjoying the game and completing the pirated version, which lead me to buy it for Co Op, with another friend who bought it on my recommendation and a 3rd who grabbed it after.
I pirated 1 copy of the game (-£0)
I sold 3 copies (+75)
Ubisoft can thank me later.
I wonder how many of those 52% actually download infringing content on a regular basis.
Might as well posit that people who steal cigarettes buy more tobacco products.
This goes to show that more than half of the USian population believes in the tyranny produced by the power elite and believe in punishing people for non-crimes. That the population of the US is so badly educated and brainwashed that they believe these things. It goes to show that the US is not a civilized nation with rational, reasonable laws that make sense in any sense of the word.
Survey suggests P2P Users lie through their teeth. Who is going to answer a survey about illicit activity honestly?
The problem is that for my generation there is hardly anything of interest being released let alone want to buy.
'My Generation'? Yep, I'm of that generation. Who, Stones, Hendrix and all that.
We will have pretty well everything we want to listen to
- on 12in Vinyl
- on Cassette
- on CD
So why would I even bother to look inside music stores(if you can find one these days) or browse online stores when we know that there is nothing for us of interest?
Ok, the likes of Joe Bonamassa are making stuff I want to listen to these are small fry compared to the huge volume of shite that is around today.
Now if the record companies would release some of the old John Mayall live sets esp the one where Eric Clapton featured and their 1969 set at the Marquee then I'd be interested otherwise, Meh! I'll pass.
This article was as much about the differences between the populations surveyed in germany and USA. from TFA, Germans that responded to the survey were almost twice as likely to obtain free music. it also pointed out Germany still bought lots of physical media (82% sales were CD), while the trend in USA was in favour of online downloads (more than 50%).
/. does not present the whole story in TFA.
Additionally, while 52% US citizens believe that downloading free music is some sort of crime, 59% of Germans surveyed believe this too. By leaving this point off the summary,
Yes, yes, P2P are all evil leeches that contribute nothing to society.
Pretty people are more attractive.
Rich people have more money.
Samzenpus is an idiot.
Feel free to add down below.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Let's face you: you better learn a fucking second language, and it'd better be Korean.
America's lost it, our day in the limelight has passed. Buy a Korean car-- oh, wait, you already did-- get a LG television, and hold onto your Apple tight, because the next one you buy'll be made by Samsung. It's inevitable, the future belongs to the land of the rising sun: porn cartoons, bullet trains, samurai, and all that shit. It's the future, man. I hope you're gonna be able to speak the language.
People who want music will get what they can online and buy the rest. People who don't care to own their own music just listen the radio or stream Pandora. It's no surprise that people who listen to music and want to own some of their own are both more likely to purchase music *and* more likely to acquire it illegally. The $64,000 question is how much music this group of folks would be purchasing if file-sharing were somehow no longer an option.
Based on the article's writeup of the survey, the survey seems to suggest that everyone is "pirating", with the only difference being where they get their music from. As we'd expect, P2P users had larger libraries with a larger proportion of their library being made up of illicitly acquired music, but in raw numbers, they still purchased more than non-P2P users. Meanwhile, non-P2P users had smaller libraries and were found to be acquiring music through shady means nearly as much, with the distinction being that they were getting it from friends and family as opposed to from the Internet.
Long story short, P2P or not, people are pirating these days, but the P2P folks have a larger appetite for music, and that includes purchasing it in larger quantities. Nothing really earth-shattering for most of us, though hopefully it'll be a wakeup call to the RIAA and their kind.
Well, we can hope, at least.
So we have 2% who believe in angels are real but do not believe in punishing download of infringing content.
I think its official that half of the people in America are just simply brainwashed or stupid.
operating systems the goodwill 200 ruuning NT dying. All major
From TFA:
"But only a small minority of Americans—between four and 15 percent—say it's reasonable to upload copyrighted content for public consumption, post links to pirated content on Facebook, or sell unauthorized copies of copyrighted materials."
so here the survey has grouped making music available via BitTorrent with selling illegal copies. That looks like bias in the survey to me because the selling of unauthorized copies of copyrighted materials is quite different to making it available on facebook or elsewhere.
Hard to believe I know, but then again a 2012 Gallup poll found that 46% of American respondents believe that an invisible superhero who lives in the sky created humans in their current form.
Conclusion: half of Americans are fucking retarded.
Hm? I think we're at least up to 100, by now.
We all know that information wants to be free.
Why would a p2p user be stupid enough to pay, and thus support THE MAN?
Google is, clearly, trolling.
Everyone is pirating. Today's copyright laws can't be followed, even by people actively trying to follow them. Someone put a nice essay together to detail how incredibly absurd we are right now. If you walk around in public, singing along to your iPod, you are violating copyright. Current copyright law is so nebulous, that average person will violate it somehow, every day. The only good news is that no one cares about most peoples infractions.
The real problem with copyright law, and increasingly all IP law, is that it is impossible to avoid bankrupting lawsuits by following an obvious set of rules. This is evidenced by the fact the biggest copyright lawsuit in Canada was filed against the music labels. The university library copyright collection agency imploded. The copyright collection agencies have lost many lawsuits at the supreme court.
If the music industry can't follow copyright law, why should anyone else?
I recently obtained an old-fashioned turntable at a garage sale. Playing LP records on that thing makes the music come ALIVE. I am listening to The Band's "The Weight" cut from the Bob Dylan 'Before the Flood' live vinyl LP album and, comparing it with the either the CD or MP3 version is like comparing HDTV with pre-hdtv. The music is so much richer and fills the room. I never realized before what was lost when the switch to CDs was made. So...those downloaded tracks from a P2P source are only offering a fraction of the audio experience that used to be available decades ago...and the music companies are to blame because they must have known at the time what they were doing...selling less for more. Yeah, you couldn't get those LPs for free but then they were actually worth a lot more because they provided a much richer audio experience. The record companies should have worked a lot harder on an analog format rather than the CDA format they ended up with on music cds. Why? Because music is analog and the conversion to a digital format loses something. Hey record companies...here's some free advice. Give the digital files away for free...that's all they are worth...and sell us a new analog format on an optical disc.
Always here about this again and again. Obviously those who are more interested in music, are going to buy more music. It doesn't mean that pirating music actually encourages people to buy more music, quite the opposite obviously.
Nothing really earth-shattering for most of us, though hopefully it'll be a wakeup call to the RIAA and their kind.
You mistakenly assumed their target is to earn more profit by getting more people to buy more songs.
WRONG. Their target is to earn more profit by gaining a monopoly on how anyone can get songs, then they can jack up prices as much as they like and get huge profits with as little investment and risk as possible.
So ANY alternative for getting music must be stopped, regardless of whether such alternative is helping or hindering sales.
The Trillion Dollar Coin: What You Really Need to Know
Think about this: if you had the LEGAL right to print your own money would you:
1. print your own money to pay your bills?
2. borrow money at interest from the private banks to pay your bills?
Of course any sane person would print their own money. Yet here we have the unimaginable stupidity of a government with the ability to print its own interest and debt free money. Instead chooses to borrow that money at interest. Astoundingly, the corporate controlled media is not asking why this practice continues.
It actually gets even worse. It costs the government 4 cents to print a bill of any denomination, for the paper, labor, ink equipment maintenance etc. It does not matter whether the bill is $1, $5, $20, or $100, the cost is the same. So if you were the one printingthis legal money, the last 4 bills mentioned would have cost you 16 cents to print. Now can you imagine the totally absurd notion of you taking these 4 bills to your banker, selling it to them for the cost of printing (16 cents), and then borrowing it back at face value ($126) with interest charges? This is the height of lunacy, and yet this is exactly what our government does. The Treasury Dept prints the bills, delivers them to the Federal Reserve branch offices, charges them for the cost of printing, and then borrows this money back at face value with interest. Ask yourself why the corporate controlled media is not covering this story.
As someone who has TBs of pirated games, I have a pretty decent steam account ($1300 last I checked). I have a huge vinyl collection and a massive download folder from Beatport.com (Due to who I DJ for, I have to own all tracks that I use in sets), yet I have a huge download folder. Why do I pirate so much and yet buy a ton of stuff? I pirate games because I get sick of being burned by shitty games, and the clips on Beatport are not nearly long enough to get the gist of the track. Youtube, you say? Good luck trying to find some obscure Minimal, Tech House, and Techno that I play.
Just thought I'd throw that out there.
Scenario 1: Music gets pirated. RIAA (or whatever the equivalent is in one's nation) takes some of those pirates to court and the court finds them guilty. Music continues to be pirated, but people buy music out of guilt and/or fear.
Scenario 2: Music gets pirated. No legal action is taken by any party. Music continues to be pirated and profits fall because there is no reason to buy music when you can just download it.
I hate to say it (and I'm sure Slashdot people will mod me down for this), but I'm kinda glad the RIAA exists when looking at those two scenarios. Do I like the fact that people pirate music and get imprisoned for it? Certainly not! However, the fact is that without the RIAA, there really wouldn't be a reason to buy the music if we could all just download it, right? It's already stored on our computers, usually DRM-free, making it more convenient than buying it on iTunes or on a physical audio CD, which we'd just rip anyway. RIAA, thanks for all your work!
Now if you'll excuse me, I must return to my cell...
when napster was first out (before they were sued and sold and reorged), music sales were up in college towns where p2p was popular. the more exposure young people have to new music, the greater the likelihood that they will buy new music. duh.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
From TFA
"The average American on a peer-to-peer network has a music library of almost 2000 songs. Of these, 760 (38 percent) are reported to be legitimately purchased. In contrast, those who say they are not P2P users (but do collect digital music files) have an average library size of 1300 songs. Of those, 582 (roughly 45 percent) were purchased from legitimate sources. Most of the others were ripped from CDs or copied from friends and family."
Correct me if I am wrong but that way that is worded seems to suggest that non P2P users buy less music from digital sources rather than less music. I fail to see how "ripped from CDs" does not count as a legitimate purchase if you bought the CD yourself.
Did you guys READ the article? It's important to remember what the article points out very clearly. Correlation doesn't imply causation. Without a controlled randomized test, it is very difficult to determine causation. While intriguing, this survey doesn't say _anything_ about whether P2P is good or bad for the industry.
Secondly, it is likely that some people surveyed lied about their answer. However, it is also possible that the survey was constructed to minimize lying with standard survey techniques. Unfortunately, the article doesn't go into detail about how the survey was performed.
Isn't it begging the qustion when they say "52% of Americans also said that downloading infringing content should be a punishable offense." :
The question should have been "How serious an offence do you think downloading copyighted material for personal use should be?"
With a multiple choice answers of
- Not an offense (considerered to be Fair Use)
- Civil suit by copyright holder
- Roughly equal to a parking fine
- Misdemeanor
- Felony
- Death Penalty
This means the *AA's marketing plan to manipulate the sense of reality in people is slowly working. ( assuming the number is accurate, and not like most surveys )
Long story short, P2P or not, people are pirating these days, but the P2P folks have a larger appetite for music, and that includes purchasing it in larger quantities. Nothing really earth-shattering for most of us, though hopefully it'll be a wakeup call to the RIAA and their kind.
Well, we can hope, at least.
This resonates with something I've come to realise over the past week or so with regards to my own purchasing habits. And it's not just down to "I buy what I download", although you can easily oversimplify it out to that.
If I'm listening to a lot of music, I want to buy music. If I watch a lot of Anime, I want to buy Anime. If I'm watching a lot of genre TV, I want to buy genre DVDs. This includes if listened via radio or Spotify, or watch stuff on TV or on DVDs I already own. Consuming a certain type of media makes me want to consume more, and when I'm browsing the shops just after payday, that type of media is foremost in my mind.
I don't always buy exactly what I've already watched, although I sometimes do, but it puts me in the mindset to buy something.
So whether it's via torrents or via radio/TV/Spotify/VOD/rental, if I've just really enjoyed something then see something similar on the shelves of a shop, or in an Amazon search, then I'm more likely to buy it than when that kind of thing isn't on my mind.
I buy more media when I'm consuming media. This goes for things I see or listen to legitimately, too. But it's easy to understand why some people who pirate music will also buy a lot. They either want what they've listened to or just want to buy some music.
Tiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
I haven't bought any music for 5 years, somehow I have every new album I'm interested in though. Perhaps I'm an outlier. I'd rather go to the concerts and support the bands that way than give them ~$0.20 of the $25 I drop on a album (I'm into death metal and the albums are even more inflated in price than mainstream stuff AND never on sale in the stores where I live).
I definitely agree. I don't think that we can reasonably use such a defense as justification for pirating (morally or legally), but I do believe that the RIAA would be well-advised to approach the situation with that sort of thinking and awareness. Rather than viewing these people as customers that have been saturated with advertising and the culture of music (as Neil Young put it, "piracy is the new radio"), they're treating them as opponents. Jobs had it right when he went to the music industry with the idea of the iTunes Store and said that people were "spending an hour to download four songs that you could buy for under $4 from Apple, which means you’re working for under minimum wage" and that they'd be willing to go to the services that provide a decent service at a decent price. And then they followed that up with the whole iTunes Match service, which basically acted like amnesty for all previous acts of piracy, thus encouraging people to break out of that habit while making it trivial (both in terms of simplicity and in terms of cost) to do so.
Other companies have been championing that cause as well, but it feels as if they're having to drag the RIAA along, kicking and screaming.
But the real question is are they spending as much as they would have if they weren't pirating at all. Of course this is impossible to determine. But just as one side can through surveys like this at you, the other can throw out things like the decline in record store sales (which may or may not be offset by increases in downloaded sales), etc. Both sides of this issue can come up with valid arguments when you cherry pick the stats you want to.
At some point you have to accept what the numbers are telling you.
If you were not interested in CO-OP, you wouldn't have bought the game.