Music Doesn't Feature In the Pirate Bay's Top 100 Biggest Torrents

journovampire writes Good news for the industry's anti-piracy efforts? Or rather embarrassing for music's appeal in the big, wide world? No single music release features in the Top 100 most-torrented files. From the article: "MBW has analysed TPB’s Top 100 most-pirated files in the 48 hours since its re-emergence. And although you’ll find plenty of movies and a smattering of porn in there, you won’t see a single music release. The Top 4 most-pirated files over the weekend were all movies, led by new Jason Statham vehicle Wild Card. It was followed by three more Hollywood releases – The Interview, American Sniper and Nightcrawler."

Comments

Maybe it's because the music industry has adapted?

[SirAnodos]

Could it be the music industry has adapted enough that the average joe doesn't feel the need to pirate music as much as other media?
Yes, the adaptation certainly isn't ideal, but most of my friends now pay $9 a month (or so) and stream all their music and stream most new music. They are letting their personal music libraries slowly bit rot away as they increasingly rely on the cloud and streaming services.
Plus most digital albums can be bought without DRM these days.
But movies are a different story. You have to wait before you can even watch a movie in your own home, and movie media is always DRMed.

Re:Other sources for music

[quantaman]

I'd say Netflix since it's only $8, but I don't know where TPB's traffic is coming from. There are a lot of countries that have poor Netflix availability(they have Netflix, but certain movies don't show up).

Even still, I can't blame people for not wanting to buy movies. You spend $9.50 per ticket($19 with your date)($11 for 3D, $22 with date) to see it in theatres, and then they want you to spend $20-25 more to get the DVD or BD. It was one thing that back in the day you'd spend $10 on tickets(or less), and the VHS/DVD would cost $20-30, and I could justify that. I only want to see the movie once, so I'll pay a fraction of the cost of buying it outright to see it in theatres. Now, watching it once in theatres is equivalent to buying the BD with extra features. Fuck everything about that. I stopped justifying doing both(going to theatres and buying the disc) a long time ago, and now I have a hard time justifying either. If I only want to watch it once, I shouldn't have to pay the full price of the discs in stores. And it's absurd to buy a BD, watch it once, and return it, using Wal-Mart as a pseudo-rental outlet.

Sorry for the rant, this got away from me. Point being: I think this is a sign that the movie industry needs to re-evaluate its pricing and how it reaches consumers.

Only a subset of movies show up on Netflix, and they typically take a while to get there.

I would be curious to see the relationship of torrent popularity and availability on Netflix. Do movies and TV shows see a big drop in torrenting when they become available on Netflix?

Re:More proof

[bobjr94]

Pretty much. Our kids just listen to songs off youtube all the time on their phones, don't really care if they actually have the song stored on their device or just stream it. Kids now a days have a hard time telling the difference between local and cloud storage and playing or streaming. But youtube does not have HD audio, even their HD sized video streams still have a very low audio bandwidth, about the same audio bitrate as a typical itunes song. And the small mobile sized video streams have pretty low audio quality. But then again most people don't care. What was the joke a few years ago; $250,000 recording session, $100,000 mixing, $70,000 mastering session to a 99 cent song played though $4.99 earbuds grabbed at the market next to the gum and candy.

Pfft

[Beerdood]

"+ 3 Insightful"

Really? Has your lawn been horribly trampled by kids lately? There's so much good stuff out there I don't even know where to begin. We're in a golden era of music choice and availability. Not only do we have a plethora of different types and combinations of sounds and rhythms that are available for the mixing (mostly due to electronic music and computers), but this generation has the ability to find any music from anywhere now - thanks to the internet you can find all kinds of obscure stuff from another corner of the world. You have millions of artists to choose from anywhere now - maybe it's your perception bias making you think it's off (because when you walked into a CD / record store 20-30 years ago, they tend to carry only the best material, and you don't have to wade through crap).

Maybe you meant to say "I don't like the top 40 stuff they constantly repeat on the radio or at sporting events or at the bars". Newsflash: every generation thinks their parents' music was lame, but my generation's music was the greatest ever, but my kids listen to complete shit. Talk to a 30-something and they'll think Pearl Jam or Nirvana were the greatest. Talk to a 60-something and they'll think Zeppelin and Queen were the greatest. Talk to a teenager now and they'll think Katy Perry or Taylor Swift are the best evar! Maybe this has to do more with the music you listed to as a teenager shaping your musical tastes (and associating good times with that music).

Re:Younger people don't assign music a monetary va

[Lumpy]

Whole Generation? Your information is horribly out of date.

I was raised to believe that from my father who said, "it is OK to record FM radio" which I did all the time. I also Ripped friends CD's as well as record copies of Records...

  I then taught my daughter the same except she found you can just rip friends CD's

Hopefully she teaches her 4 year old daughter the same. So there is 3 generations that know the fact that Music IS free.

Re:Why pirate?

[Kjella]

Some might argue that this is a serious problem-- that the music industry is in a shambles and it's not clear this is all sustainable. Others might argue that this is evidence of where the problem was all along-- that piracy is the result of high prices and poor service, and when people are provided a cheap and convenient product, they're often willing to pay for it in some way. Either way, I don't see much of a reason to pirate music anymore unless it's somehow unavailable through legal channels.

The music industry has oddly enough somewhat come full circle with Spotify becoming the new middleman. Here in Norway after a dip in revenue from 2009 when it was 15% digital it's now slightly higher (601 vs 592 million NOK) in 2014 with 86% digital, of which 11% is downloads and 75% streaming. During the same period the piracy rate among people under 30 dropped from 70% to 4% of the population.

Why do I say it's become full circle? Because once again either you accept the terms of Spotify or nobody going to hear about you. And because many people just use it as background noise for popular music creating superstars is still big business, the "long tail" doesn't get anything extra for writing music people care about so a lot of marginal artists are complaining that where they could make money selling CDs to a small but loyal following before Spotify pays them peanuts.

I guess Spotify lowered the bar on getting your music published, since they don't run out of shelf space or air time. But I don't think it has increased the number of artists who are able to play professionally, though I'm not sure that matters. It's a bit like comparing YouTube with cable TV, maybe a whole lot of well... something beats a couple hundred channels of "professional" TV. But when I've heard friends say "Either you're on Spotify or you don't exist" somebody's holding too much power.