Impacts of illegal downloading
I'm sure no-one using this message board would download illegally but you may be interested in this report that I have also put on the message board at the other place. I hadn't realised how high illegal downloading is in the UK. I'm totally opposed to illegal downloading, but I am sure higher digital music costs in the UK by all(Emusic, itunes, Amazon et al) compared to, say, the US, have contributed to the high rate.
The full details can be found at http://www.bpi.co.uk/press-area/news-amp3b-press-release/article/new-bpi-report-shows-illegal-downloading-remains-serious-threat-to-britains-digital-music-future.aspx
Other points from the report include:
I do think the average price of 82 pence ($1.28) contributes to the problem
The full details can be found at http://www.bpi.co.uk/press-area/news-amp3b-press-release/article/new-bpi-report-shows-illegal-downloading-remains-serious-threat-to-britains-digital-music-future.aspx
"The UKs digital music market continues to expand, but record levels of illegal downloading present a serious threat to the countrys online music future, confirms a major new report Digital Music Nation 2010 published by recording industry trade body the BPI today.
The report, featuring new research from both Harris Interactive and UKOM/Nielsen, for the first time provides a comprehensive picture of the legal and illegal digital music landscape in the UK.
The UK is one of the worlds most advanced digital music markets. With 67 legal services, the UK offers music fans unprecedented choice over how to access their favourite bands online and awareness of digital music offerings is at an all-time high. Around a quarter of record industry revenues now come from digital.
But while the UK digital music market has expanded, widespread illegal downloading means it is growing much more slowly than it ought to be. The lack of action against illegal downloading continues to undermine the potential for the digital music sector to expand, eroding value for investors, discouraging innovation and harming Britains musical culture. These effects are now felt right across the UKs creative industries.
In 2010, illegal music downloading continues to rise in the UK. The number of people using peer-to-peer software to download music has remained steady, while the use of non-P2P channels such as cyberlockers and MP3 pay sites is rising alarmingly. More than three-quarters of the music downloaded in the UK is illegally obtained, with no payment to the musicians and songwriters or music companies who invest in them.
The range and variety of services in the UKs innovative legal music market is encouraging some migration away from piracy. But in the absence of any effective deterrent, it is unsurprising that overall, illegal downloading continues to rise. This confirms the need for the urgent implementation of the Digital Economy Act, alongside industry initiatives that continue to raise awareness of legal services and the value of music.
Geoff Taylor, BPI Chief Executive, said: Digital music is now mainstream in the UK, with much to be proud of nearly 70 legal services and a further increase in the numbers of digital singles and albums set to be sold online in 2010.
Yet this growth is a fraction of what it ought to be. Illegal downloading continues to rise in the UK. It is a parasite that threatens to deprive a generation of talented young people of their chance to make a career in music, and is holding back investment in the fledgling digital entertainment sector.
As the internet becomes central to many aspects of our lives, including how we access our entertainment, we must decide whether we can afford as a society to abandon ethical values we stand by elsewhere - that stealing is wrong; that creativity should be rewarded; that our culture defines who we are, and must be protected.
The creative industries employ two million people in the UK and are the fastest growing sector of the economy. Urgent action is needed to protect those jobs and allow Britain to achieve its potential in the global digital market. 2011 must be the year that the Government acts decisively to ensure the internet supports creativity and respects the basic rules of fair play we embrace as a nation.
Other points from the report include:
Innovation is helping to drive growth beyond the traditional a la carte music purchase model pioneered by market leader iTunes. 18% of digital income now comes from a mixture of subscription services like those offered by Napster and eMusic and the ad-supported services including Spotify and We7.
The UK now boasts 67 legal digital music services believed to be the widest available choice in the world spanning streaming, a la carte, subscription, bundled and mobile offerings. Britain compares favourably with Germany (42), Spain (29), France and Italy (both 27) and the USA (20).
The range of music available to UK consumers on legal services has expanded, drawn from a global catalogue of licensed digital music in excess of 13 million tracks. Consumers are responding enthusiastically. In the UK, where the average price of a digital single track download is 82p, the number of different tracks downloaded each week has grown by almost four times in five years
I do think the average price of 82 pence ($1.28) contributes to the problem
Comments
Which brings my (probably naive) question: why is music so much more expensive for you?
And (off-topic): did you ever get any good non-Youssou N'dour mbalax recomendations? I remember you posted the question @ eMu last summer.
tl;dr
Load of horseshit.
IMO music is more expensive here because they think they can get away with it. Prices are not too dissimilar across the European Union countries once slight VAT (the European equivalent of sales tax) differences are taken into account. Even allowing for the tax difference with the US (any idea what it is typically, in say, one of the bigger states?) music is much more expensive over here in any format. One of the problems is that because the price is now so high, more younger people download illegally and expect music to be free, and are consequently never prepared to pay for it. Those of us who do pay, either via CDs or downloads, are contributing more to label costs. I'd really like to see an explanation from, say, the Beggars Group, which is UK based about why they charge more in some markets. But the bottom line from say Amazon and itunes, who both operate out of the Channel Isles to avoid taxes on downloads, actually use the same computers that downloads come from in the States, so their costs here are no higher. Basically I believe they are screwing us more!!
I do wonder, however, whether if someone found out, whether illegal downloading would be at a similar level proportionately accross other parts of the World??
As distribution channels go, the consumer is in charge when it comes to digital goods and that this process of disintermediation and realignment is cutting across a wide swath of retailers that pinned their business model on the transport and sale of media as a physical good. This market disruption is the same as when the automobile industry cut into the horse and buggy market and when the trucking industry soared past trains with the advent of the highway systems (very US-centric analogy perhaps).
The reality is that the market is changing and fragmenting; it is very likely that the concept of the blockbuster or superstar is waning. Emerging businesses like Kickstarter, Bandcamp, and Steam are pointing towards distribution models that, while not fully disintermediated, are certainly streamlined. Erecting new laws and international agreements is only increasing the friction and pain with regards to the change and applying forced artificial scarcity will likely not ingratiate oneself with consumers.
And no, I'm not going to claim that all music should be free or that copyright infringement is 100% a-ok (although I would personally rather have no copyright than the system we have today). I'm just pointing out that the price they picked largely for convenience would be better off lowered to a point in which far more people would pay. And if you expect to get to a point of 100% participation, plan on giving it all away for free. Otherwise come to grips with the fact that some people have no interest in paying.
I can't remember if it was in a discussion with a friend or from an article, but the point was made that you can categorize consumers (at least when it comes to digital music) in one of three ways: those who will always pay, those who would rather pay and those who will never pay. Make things easy on the first group, work on winning over the second and ignore the third.
I don't see anything wrong with musicians trying to make a living doing what they love. I have a choice as to whether or not I will pay the asking price. Concerts, for instance. Some are priced so high that they just don't fit my budget. However, I have paid more than felt comfortable to see two or three musicians, and it seemed worth it after the fact because I had a great time.
Downloader A, a 16 year old boy downloaded 1000 songs off of a P2P network. Since the market price is 99 cents a song, we have lost $990 to piracy.
Wrong. Downloader A might have spent $15-20 for the music he really wanted, if he didn't have the option of getting it somewhere else for free. That $15-$20 will now be spent buying an xBox platinum hits game instead. In an earlier era, he might have sprung for one CD with 12 songs and lived without the rest. He considers the rest gravy, and will probably never even listen to the great majority of what he's downloaded. In no case would he have spent $1000 obtaining the music legally if the illegal options weren't there, especially given that he only makes about $400 a month at his part time job.
99 cents was set because for a lot of people in the biz making decisions are of an age and era where that amount equals the price of a single. The average buyer doesn't want to pay $15 for a CD with only 2 decent songs, they want to buy those 2 songs. For the average buyer getting what the really want for $2 is very much preferable to paying $15 for 2 things they want and a bunch of stuff they don't want. As long as that dynamic remains, I don't know how much movement there will be the pricing of tracks.
As I've said before, my 6 nieces and nephews (ranging in ages 16-22) all have music collections on their iPods that put what I had to shame at their, even though I spent every spare penny (starting with my birthday money and my paper route money) buying music. I honestly don't know if any of them have bought a CD or a legal download in the past several years. we have a generation of kids who don't see any sense of paying for music.
Anyone read "Appetite for Self-Destruction" by Steve Knopper? I"m about half way through. It's a rather interesting case study of the music industry of the last 30 years or so. I picked up a copy at Half Priced books for a few bucks.
(I wish people would stop giving items 1 star ratings on Amazon for reasons other than the actual quality of the product.)
I am fascinated by what bandcamp is doing to my psychology in this regard. I've been touting the new Invisible Allies album elsewhere on this board (Electronic category thread). It's $4.90 on emusic, $10 on bandcamp, and not hard to find it for free. After streaming it a few times I bought it from bandcamp. Why? Mostly gratitude - love the music and felt the artist deserved more than a cup of cheap coffee back from me. I don't do this all the time, and do not have a massive music budget (I'm at the $15.89 level on emusic), and I'm really not writing this with the (conscious) intention of boasting about being all ethical - more like thinking aloud about why I just did what I did. But this time it made sense. The reasons why include a connection to that music, reading an interview with the artist and liking his vision, being part of discussions like this, and I guess many of my wider more gut level convictions about how to treat people and the value of the work of their hands and minds.
Before anyone says so, I am more than aware that anyone who tried to build their business model on me as the typical consumer might well be bankrupt in a month, and I am outnumbered by the teens swiping Britney songs. But it does interest me how the internet can push in both directions. It can make the whole thing seem more anonymous and make it seem like nonsense to pay money to a faceless corporation via an impersonal download service to transfer some bytes that do not reduce the sender's stock of bytes. And it can connect me with an artist in another part of the world and their ideas and make me want to invest in their work. Seems to me a lot more of the available energy should go in the direction of trying the make what I just experienced more widespread. Might have more to do with things like education and communication than legal processes.
when available, i will always order the music from artist's website
Can you take anything that they say and do seriously at all anymore? In the least? I certainly cannot. Asinine.
If I were them I'd focus on Brazil - some of the most extensive illegal music "sharing" blogs out there are based in Brazil, where hearts were entertaining June (as opposed to some other month) and we stood beneath an amber moon and softly murmured "someday soon."
I believe it will. Obviously these current prices are working for some/plenty of people. But if the music industry is not happy with their current returns, they are screwed. I don't see anyway they can possibly expand their profits with the status quo.
Thanks for the congratulations thom and Bad Thoughts. Fortunately she will be living about 20 minutes drive away - close enough but not too close!
I still wonder (going back a few comments) whether this conversation (not the one on this board specifically, the bigger online one about downloading) needs to get wider...certainly legal issues and business models/pricing (the mainstays of the conversation) and technology tweaks are what is going to drive most of it and probably have the biggest impacts on consumer behavior (and I have no great thoughts to add on those). But imagine if someone developed some compelling education materials (bet you could get a grant for this) that helped middle schoolers and high schoolers to (off the top of my head and in no particular order) 1. begin developing the ability to critique the rhetoric and misuse of statistics on various sides of this debate, but particularly the major labels; 2. begin to understand what is happening with the Russian sites, blogs etc. in the context of globalization, erosion of borders etc; 3. figure out how to interact with some actual artists and small labels and hear their views (this kind of thing can be powerful with kids that age); 4. begin to get a wider view of the kinds of music out there than they will get from the usual channels; 5. begin to think about how legal processes get abused by large corporations to protect profit at the expense of indiscriminate prosecution...wouldn't that be a pretty important part of music education and media literacy and social studies at this point in time? There would be some uptake in schools if it were well designed. It would not trump all the other, macro factors, but interventions like that can have significant effect locally (statistics about educational outcomes are another kind best treated skeptically). If it turned into just "let's do moral education to stop people downloading" then forget it - school is not that powerful.
I have enough other projects, but it seems like the sort of thing someone should be looking at. Maybe someone is already and I have just not happened across it. I guess my basic point is that there might be points at which to do some good in addition to the kickstarter/bandcamp/etc interventions.
I am not sure what the emoticon for a wan, world-weary smile is. Like Greg I train/educate teachers. On the one hand I resonate with your comment - often it seems so little is achieved for such great investment in formal schooling. Too much of it is narrow in scope and ineffective. But I also get to see the bright spots, the places where amazing learning happens because someone cared and got creative, and the huge capacity kids have for re-orienting their worlds and making connections and seeing new solutions if school does not drill it out of them. Just dreaming that this conversation could connect with the latter scenario...