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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."
No news here. We've known this at least ever since Steve jobs pointed out that the biggest competition to digital music isn't other outlets but digital "piracy". iTunes was the first viable option that showed you could do it better. And they did make a huge step forward.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Keep renting, good little Spotify/Google/Amazon drones! Keep renting! You must contribute to the Mothership's recurring revenue! Ownership is bad. Renting is good! Convenience is more valuable than anything!
I don't respond to AC's.
I'll stick to Pirate Bay.
Never going to Give You Up!
It's almost as if you make it easy to buy/use something legally, people will be more likely to use it.
That said, every few years, I check to see if I can buy my favourite J/KPop tunes...nope, they don't want to sell them to me. I guess I'll keep ripping them from Youtube then.
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.
I'll take spotify if i want to listen to new music and not be like old people who listen to the same old stuff
I don't buy music unless it's something I will want to listen to again. Personally I don't really find much enjoyment in listening to a bunch of crap hoping to find a gem among the turds so Spotify is approximately useless to me. I'll happily pay $10 for something I know I like and can enjoy multiple times over $10 for a bunch of stuff I mostly will not like every time. Maybe you just aren't very discerning in what you spend your time listening to?
I'm sure, some of the drop really is due to legitimate alternatives appearing. Yet, those alternatives still cost some money, so the criminal and civil prosecutions of the illegal downloaders and download-facilitators must've helped too.
How much of the observed drop is due to those, law-based measures?
And, if these measures' really did prove a significant deterrent, thus contributing to what we now seem to agree is a good thing, maybe, Slashdot ought to collectively apologize to the MPAA, RIAA and the like organizations collectively denounced here as "MAFIAA" for years?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The major ISPs block so many sites in the UK. In order to access the illegal download sites you have to put some work into circumventing these blocks. It's more convenient to pay £10 an month than to find proxies and put them into your browser. Lots of times the proxies only last a short while. You're also putting yourself at some risk by using dodgy proxies. So, the great firewall has worked because streaming is affordable and easier than block busting. Paying £10 a month for netflix or spotify is better value than the old model of having to pay £10 for a cd or DVD.
99% of the new music today is garbage.
They've been saying that for longer than you've been alive and they'll be saying it long after you are dead. Cute that you think you have some sort of revelation there. My grandparents thought my parent's favorite music was utter drek too and your kids will think your music sucks. A lot of it is crap of course but the funny thing is that we can't quite agree on exactly which bits are the crap.
We have a 100% blues/jazz low power station privately funded, with ZERO commercials that I listen to 99% of the time any more.
So you have very specific tastes and think anything else must be crap. Not true of course just like it wasn't true 50 years ago and won't be true in another 50 years. I have my favorite genres and artists too but just because I don't enjoy it personally doesn't mean others can't/won't.
Basically laziness wins.
Movies are one thing. They are an investment in the time you need to spend to actually enjoy them, and you watch them for the story - a story it is easy to remember.
All entertainment is an investment of your time. If you choose to multitask while enjoying some media then that's fine but you still are spending time on it no matter what the form of entertainment is.
Music, on the other hand, is something you listen to while doing other thing
Maybe YOU listen to it that way but I do not. When I listen to music I really listen to it. Having it just playing as background noise I find to be terribly distracting and irritating. I'm not saying you are wrong to listen to it however you prefer but don't presume that your preferences are universal.
you can stop in the middle of a track without feeling like you've just wasted your time by not getting to the end.
I do that all the time with movies and TV shows. I'm guessing you don't have kids if you are bothered by being interrupted. Heck DVRs are a god send if you have a busy life.
Also, people like to sing along to songs they know which gives music a lot more replay value than a movie.
Hogwash. People quote movies all the time and rewatch them regularly. What do you think people do with all those bluray disks? I can probably quote you every line of the Princess Bride or Star Wars (classic of course) or Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Heck there are some fans who go every week to re-watch Rocky Horror and dress up and recite/sing along. I rewatch movies more often than I listen to any given piece of music but that's just me.
I think this is highly controversial. Sure, there's one school of thought that says if customers wave their money in your face, you should take it. But there's another that says at the first sight of a customer's money, you should angrily shout "get away, you piece of shit!" and then and spit in their direction, in order to maximize profits. This latter point of view is very popular and especially in the entertainment industry, but I think it doesn't get explained well enough in economics classes. Our society needs to do better.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
No kidding; make it easy and affordable with a nice user interface and not many will bother with "piracy".
Hmm, so Spotify has over 30 million songs... 90% of everything is crap... so that means you get access to over 3 million non-crap songs for under $10 a month? Wow, you either gotta be really poor, or just really love hearing the same songs over and over on the radio courtesy of ClearChannel, to pass up on that deal!
Once you've pirated most of what you want when you're young, as you get older there will be less and less new material that may appeal to you that you wouldn't buy even if piracy were not an option. Or maybe it's not getting older, but that they can't seem to turn out anything today that is worth buying. Yet it is possible to find a lot of older things on Amazon that are worth buying, and then you own a permanent mp3 file copy.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
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.
That's not mere convenience. It's musical wealth, for cheap.
A long, long time ago, Slashdot posters used to care about privacy. Now, privacy isn't even a consideration, so long as you can get your stuff for "cheap". I hope it's worth it to y'all.
I don't respond to AC's.
This would not (or at least not for many years into the future) have occurred without "illegal" downloading.
Without the proof that it wouldn't break the internet, they'd have stuck by the mantra that the internet couldn't handle it.
Without the proof of the market, they'd have stuck by the mantra that the market wasn't there.
Without the competition, they would have priced it out of reach.
If the competition of "illegal" downloading were to disappear today, streaming would price itself out of reach and start dying. The presence of some "illegal" activity is critical for the health and survival of many industries. This is definitely one of them.
Soulseek is absolutely the one sustainable success of the first wave of file sharing. I can still find vinyl rips of rare 80s finnish hardcore, or every live Prince set in existence, and I still leave soulseek (well, nicotine plus) running in the background. It found its niche among music geeks very quickly and it's been sitting pretty ever since.
You do realize that a streaming service gives you access to the music you like now
No it lets me rent access to it as long as I pay $10/month in perpetuity so long as I have an active internet connection. No thanks. If that works for you great but it isn't a good value for money to me. If I like a piece of music I'll get it in a format I can listen to whenever I want, without internet access required, and without further transactions required. If this costs a bit more per unit I'm ok with that.
new music as it's released
You hugely overestimate how much that matters to me.
and music from the past that you don't know exists but might like if you heard it.
If I run across it great but I have yet to find a recommendation algorithm that does an even slightly decent job figuring out what I'll enjoy or want to spend time on. Seriously, they are universally terrible at it. Mostly they do one of two things. Either A) they look at listening habits of other people and try to infer what I like from what they like (and fail) or B) they look at what I just listened to and try to recommend the same artist or genre that I just listened to with no clue as to my actual opinion on it. Even when I've shared detailed information about what I actually do like they still fail completely to find recommendations much better than random chance.
Maybe you need to try a modern streaming service. Sounds like you tried Pandora in 2001 and gave up.
I have tried them from time to time just to see what is out there. In fairness I'm not a big music listener so I'm definitely not the target demographic for a lot of these services. When I listen to things it tends to be more podcasts, comedy and occasionally talk radio like NPR. I like music now and then but I'm bored or annoyed by most of it. Plus I'm a very active listener so when I listen to music I really like to listen to it like I'm sitting in a concert. I like to focus on what I'm actively doing and that includes listening to music.
You are right. If you never plan to pay for new music again in your life, it's a better to deal buy that 1 CD and listen to it over and over. For people that are actively listening to new music streaming saves them money.
I don't deny that for some people it's a great deal. I merely am pointing out that not everyone has the same needs or interests. I happen to fall into the later category and it sounds like you are in the former. For me a streaming service is a good approximation of useless because it offers almost the exact opposite of what I want. Plus I have a fairly substantial music library collected over many years so it's not as if I have a lack of options already. I could play what I have for more than a year and never hear the same thing twice - all available 24/7 without having to spend another dime on any device I care to utilize and without ever needing an internet connection.
You understand that's not true right? Streaming services allow you to mark things to keep offline.
And what happens when you stop paying for that streaming service? It disappears. And let's be honest, the real value in the service is through active streaming even though that is a nice feature now and then. If you don't have an active (and relatively fast) internet connection most of the time then streaming services aren't really going to be much value. That was my point though it seems I made it clumsily.
You aren't forced to listen by recommendation. Is that what you think? You can pick whatever you want to listen.
Of course I'm aware you don't have to use the recommendations. But what is the point of having them if they suck? If the service isn't recommending things to me that I might be interested in then I'm back to listening to random assortments of music, most of which I'm quite certain that I'm not going to care for. My choices are either to listen to a bunch of random stuff, 99%+ of which is unremarkable at best (to me) or to use recommending services which (to date) do a bad job of figuring out what I might enjoy. Sorry but I don't really care for either of those options.
To be clear, I have very little interest in spending time listening to music that I'm not likely to enjoy. Many people seem to enjoy the hunt for new favorites or simply enjoy listening to music in general more than I do and I respect that but I'm not about to spend my own money and more importantly my own time to do it. Think of it kind of like clothes shopping. Some people love the hunt for new clothes and a new looks but I find the process tedious and unrewarding. Different strokes for different folks and all that. I'm perfectly happy to buy a song or album that I hear through serendipity but I'm just not interested in actively hunting for the needle in the haystack and I'm even less interested in paying to do it. I'm grateful other people enjoy the process so I can sometimes find something I enjoy too thanks to their efforts.
My step son (19) and his friends seem to spend far more time mining older music than listening to new stuff.
That's probably because the catalog of "old" stuff is a lot larger than the new stuff, plus it has already been curated for the good stuff. It's pretty easy to find a Best Of album for some awesome musicians of decades (or centuries) past. Hunting for new hits is always a tedious process and requires a high tolerance for listening to a lot of crap. Kids today have the advantage of having easy access to vast catalogs of good music that simply weren't available for reasonable amounts of money when we were younger. I grew up when vinyl and magnetic tape were your only options and I was nearly an adult before CDs became widespread. The web wasn't a thing until after I graduated college and digital music catalogs have only been a serious option for about 20 years.
I think people tend to love the music they grew up listening to. The more options they have the more likely they are to like a wider variety. Perhaps your step son has a more diverse taste in music simply because he has access to more stuff than we did growing up.
I love a lot of music, and I'll go see anything.
See I'm the opposite. I have pretty diverse musical tastes but have very little interest in most live performances and I don't enjoy the ones I go to very much. Not entirely sure why - just not my thing I guess. I find live performances to be tedious affairs in general with the quality of the performance worse than the recordings in most cases.
When you hear teenagers saying the opposite...asking why 20th century music was so much better, it's kind of odd.
Probably a bit of sampling bias (described above) combined with a small sample size (your immediate contacts) and possibly a touch of hipsterism thrown in. I don't think music from today is any better or worse but it simply hasn't had time to have the good stuff culled from the crap. We know what the hits from the 70s and 80s were so we can easily ignore the (copious) bad stuff.