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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
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.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Of course, digital music is a rare place of relative sanity in the realm of digital entertainment, where *if* you do actually choose to 'buy' a song, odds are it is drm free and not outrageously expensive.
Movies and books have download editions that are frequently *more* expensive than getting a physical copy of the same data, and are encumbered by drm on top of that.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
IMO, ownership isn't the answer to everything. When I was a kid, I could scrape together the $8 or $9 bucks to buy an album (this was a long time ago, obv.) maybe six times a year. Off to the record store. Hours spent looking at the covers of hundreds of records, hoping to God I could figure out which one was worth my paltry allowance simply by looking at the cover art. Album purchased. Go home, listen to ten songs until the needle wears a hole in the record, or, just as likely, regret that I just bought an album I didn't like very much.
Today, I pay $15 a month (in today's money) for a family Spotify account. Me, my wife, and my two kids probably listen to at least a hundred bucks worth of new albums (in 1984 dollars) each month. I can go back and sample a half dozen albums from an artist I like without having to shell out only to discover that I've wasted my money. I can introduce my kids to entire genres without breaking the bank. My daughter can hear six versions of the piano piece she's studying. That's not mere convenience. It's musical wealth, for cheap.
// This is not a sig.
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.
You can still buy the albums. This is just another choice.
For someone like me who is musically clueless, this is a great service. No commercials and I don't have to know what I like beforehand.
Yeah! I bought one Milli Vanilli gramaphone record back in the 90's and I've been listening to it ever since,
You and me, Zontar, WE are the REAL cool kids!
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But it's not all crap. Yes, most the pop music is crap but when was that not the case? There are music gems of all genres for all times; including now.
I found that when I was buying music I was spending more money and listening to less "new" stuff, e.g. music I had not heard before. For example in the last couple weeks I discovered Green Day's When September Ends, came out in 2005 but because I was limiting myself to what I had in my library I didn't fall in love with that song until now. By using a streaming service I'm able to introduce myself to more music without having to buy it, yet I know/assume that the artists that I listen to frequently get paid more then those that I listen to only a couple times.
If you want to buy all your music that's fine. All that really matters to me is that the content creators get paid for what they produce. But there are valid reasons to prefer streaming over purchasing.
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.
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.
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