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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."
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?
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,
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.
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.
Oh, angels are real but they're also extremely deadly. My advice is: don't blink. Blink and you're dead. They are fast. Faster than you can believe. Don't turn your back. Don't look away. And don't blink.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Indeed.
If only they knew that life on Earth was started by some dumb alien kid who was on vacation on Earth with his family and didn't properly follow the intergalactic garbage laws and just threw away his sandwich...
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Darlin', I'm only a skip ahead of you... and I enjoyed all these guys too, though I was a wee tot at the time... So many great performers are still making great music. This era was particularly hard, because so many were lost to chemical habits. The survivors though have active lives as artists you need to make a list of maybe your top 20 favorite performers and see what they've been doing since the 60s. You might be pleasantly surprised of the amazing body of music that never made it to the top 40 machine. That and if you're willing to wind through independent music sources, there are some amazing young'ns carrying on the traditions. Don't let the sterile flavorless pap that is popular music today make you think for a moment that nothing good is happening.
The really silly thing is that angels as most people see them aren't actually in the bible. The text does describe many denizens of heaven, including some usually referred to as angels, but none of the descriptions are anything like the traditional image of the man in white robes with a pair of wings and a halo. That is a figure from pagan mythology - like so much, early Christian artists took inspiration from what came before and adapted it into their own works.
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.
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.
He did say released
I tend to agree - the only music I have bought since CDs were invented has been re-releases of old stuff I have (or had) on vinyl, or would have bought it it had been distributed better. However, I have been to see numerous live bands since. None of whom are featured on the TV.
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You have obviously missed the Ghanaians dancing Gangnam style! http://ghanaleak.net/video/azonto-gangnam-style-ghana-style-zigi-african-parody
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Just wait until they come back to sterilize his mistake....
We only need to inflate the currency to support the addiction to borrowing money from the Federal Reserve which in the end is bleeding this nation dry. Bleeding all nations dry. Who do you think owns all those millions of foreclosed on houses that haven't been put back up on the market, they will sell those homes when the interest rates are better for the bank and real estate values rise again, and then do exactly what they did before. Not a single banker punished. Not a single action taken to stop banks from making further gambles on property, derivative swaps, cheating their own customers, no a single thing has changed since 2008. This is simply a big wealth siphon and the Federal Reserve is the biggest parasite on the human race in all of recorded history.
Enough already. kill this thing and put it out of our misery.
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.
Actually that is not entirely true. One element in determining whether or not someone can use the "fair use" defense against a charge of copyright infringement is whether or not they profited from the use. If you made an unauthorized copy of copyrighted material and profited from it, the burden of proof (not quite the correct term, but I cannot think of a better way to phrase it at the moment) to claim fair use is far higher than if you did not profit from it.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
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 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.
Come on. How bad could it really be?
Oh, right.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?