Slashdot Mirror
Easier Streaming Services Put Dent in Illegal Downloading (bbc.com)
Music piracy is falling out of favour as streaming services become more widespread, new figures show. From a report: One in 10 people in the UK use illegal downloads, down from 18% in 2013, according to YouGov's Music Report. The trend looks set to continue -- with 22% of those who get their music illegitimately saying they do not expect to be doing so in five years. "It is now easier to stream music than to pirate it," said one survey participant. Another respondent said: "Spotify has everything from new releases to old songs, it filled the vacuum, there was no longer a need for using unverified sources."
Most people don't want to "own" movies. The watch them, then they really don't need to see them for years. That's why cable,TV, and Netflix works as a model.
For many people music is the same way. How many times are you really going to listen to that same song?
Today, more than ever, there are tools to understand the user, and their desires, in alarmingly graphic detail.
This is both good, and bad, from both ends of the producer-consumer spectrum.
From the producer side, it utterly DESTROYS deeply cherished misconceptions about what the consumer actually wants, or what drives their purchases (and their lack of purchases.) For example, the time-honored canard of "Pirates just want artists to work for nothing!" and pals. No-- research has shown, REPEATEDLY that this is not the case. The pirate just does not want to deal with the obstructions of your distribution model.
From the consumer side, the analytics tools are seen as highly invasive, and downright creepy, even though they leverage public datasets, and group behavior models, rather than specific data in many circumstances.
But, like it or not, there is no denying the power of data driven marketing and service providence.
As was pointed out when Netflix hit the scene, Netflix alone did more to eliminate movie piracy than any hairbrained scheme created by the RIAA and its constellation of associate organizations ever did, using any of their technological "solutions" at that time. The reason was because access was greatly increased, cost was very affordable, and (at the time) anything you could not stream, you could rent by mail with little personal financial risk if you failed to return the disc.
Naturally, the response of the media industry was "Kill Netflix!", which they have been attempting to do ever since.
The simple truth of "Pirates are customers who wont put up with your obstructionist bullshit, but are perfectly OK with paying for a-la-carte for bulk anytime access, and overall, consume more media then their peers, and will make more aggregate purchases." is readily apparent, and has appeared every time this kind of thing is 'tested' in the market; Every time it has been shown that when this is done, piracy dries up to a tiny fraction of prior incidence rates, with a strong coordinating relation to convenience+pricepoint.
The elephant in the room, is that the 'desire' to force consumers into deals they do not wish to participate in (eg, via region restriction lockouts, DRM, and a host of other bullshit--- to generate artificial scarcity, to drive up unit prices artificially above what the consumer genuinely wishes to spend by exploitation of a monopoly status-- eg, such as via copyright) is stronger than their desire to actually make money.
In this era, we understand the consumer to an alarming degree.
The producers should use the same data driven mechanisms to scrutinize THEMSELVES, and let go of these tired and moth eaten ideas. I suspect that they are afraid of what they will find, given how intently they have been at ignoring what their consumer marketing research has shown them for the past 2 and a half decades, as it relates to piracy.
99% of the new music today is garbage. Between pop/tech, rap, boy band country, most of it is garbage and those that pirate music already have downloaded everything they want. We have a 100% blues/jazz low power station privately funded, with ZERO commercials that I listen to 99% of the time any more. If I can't pick it up, they stream over the web which is good enough for my ears.
So, you're a criminal, eh?
I used to be a criminal too. Then I decided to stop breaking that law.
Yet, still I'm a criminal! Dammit. Oh well, at least the people who bribed my government to define me as a criminal, don't get paid anymore.
Have you considered switching to my version of criminality? It's a hell of a lot more ethical, because you deny power to evil (the movie & TV industry, where they made it illegal to play their products), and you also get to keep that power and then use it however you think best (spending on music, where the lack of DRM keeps playback legal).
Holy crap, maybe that's it! Did the music industry invent video as a diversion? To get people like me all riled up and angry, so we'd righteously spend our money on their product to stick it to the assholes with the other product?
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Think of the value of research. Nobody can do it for you. If you don't do it, then you will miss all the good music.
Every piece of music that you think isn't crappy, you heard for the first time, somehow. How did that happen?
Whatever your strategy of old, you can implement it even better, faster, cheaper, and with wider scope in 2018 than you could in 1988. It's not that anyone disagrees with Sturgeon's Law, it's that people find ways to lower its relevancy and impact. You can listen to a fuckton of music that isn't mostly crappy, where far less than 98% of your time is wasted. You can get your waste down to, I bet, around 50-67%. And that's just when you feel like researching! When you're done "working" and just wanna have a beer on the patio while rocking out, you can still drop the research and FIRE FOR EFFECT (i.e. play carefully-selected favorites) just like you do now. But you'll have a larger and more diverse collection of good stuff.
2% of music is more than you have time in your life to listen to, even if you never repeat a single song. It's a ripe resource and worth finding. You sound like someone who has given up on one of the best things in life.
How many times are you really going to listen to that same song?
Just as I've done all my life: as many times as I freaking want to, without worrying about whether I have a network connection and without getting billed for it each and every time, thanks very much.
Meh. If I want to listen to a song without a network connection, I just hit "download", and then it's on my device. Actually what I really do is hit the "Thumbs up" button, and I have the auto-generated thumbs up playlist set to download. So if I get a new phone, I just have to hit "download" on the thumbs up playlist and pretty soon I have my whole collection available for offline listening with almost zero effort.
I don't get billed for each time I listen to a song. I pay a flat monthly fee, for which I have access to basically all published music. Whatever I want to listen to, I can. If it's not already downloaded I'll have to have a network connection, but I nearly always do.
I used to say that subscription music services were stupid and swear that I would never use such a thing. Then I tried it, and now I can't imagine ever going back to buying albums. It's not just the convenience, it's the freedom to listen to absolutely anything I want to, even something I haven't bought because I'd never heard of it until two seconds ago. If I'm walking around and hear bit of a song I like, I can listen to the whole thing, or the whole album, or the artist's entire discography. Streamed or downloaded, my choice.
Subscription music is awesome. Yeah, I have to pay every month, but I end up spending roughly the same amount of money on music as when I was buying a few albums a year. And I get so much more music, so much more conveniently.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.