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A massive public policy study has revealed that on average file-sharers buy 30 per cent more music than their non-sharing counterparts. That suggests that the record labels’ self-declared enemies are in fact their best customers.
The study, known as the Copy Culture Survey, was carried out by the non-partisan American Assembly, and the results were teased yesterday. It’s based on thousands of in-depth telephone interviews across the US, and it’s probably one of the most thorough reviews of media sharing habits to be undertaken.
The results, which seem to fly in the face of assumed record label wisdom, show that file-sharers buy 30 per cent more music than their non-sharing counterparts. Interestingly, it also points out that offline copying is far more prevalent than online music piracy.
However, it’s also worth pointing out that self-confessed P2P file sharers reported having larger music collections. So, it might not be all too surprising that music lovers, with bigger music collections, also buy more music: a taste for media consumption encourages both file sharing and purchasing.
That, along with the news that offline piracy is a bigger concern, is something the record labels need to wrestle with. [American Assembly via Torrent Freak]
And yet RIAA will find a single fact from this report, twist it and use it to bang the drum for greater controls and harsher penalties.
The record labels need to follow the example of Steam. Before, games were over priced and DRM made them annoying to buy, so people would pirate them heavily. Valve thought that they would offer a better service than pirates and other games companies with Steam- it puts on huge sales, and allows you to run your games on as many machines as possible. The results: piracy has been cut down, people are buying more games than ever, and Steam is absolutely massive. If only the record labels would follow this example and cut their prices and just offer a better service than the pirates can.
Yes but, while steam IS a big success games ARE STILL over priced and DRM STILL MAKES them annoying to buy, so people STILL pirate them heavily. Maybe the rest of the games industry needs to follow steam before the record labels will take notice.
Yes, obviously steam hasn’t completely stamped out poor business practice and piracy in the games industry, but it certainly shows that a massive change of business model is the way to stop piracy as well as increasing revenue (as Steam has- it makes massive profits on it’s bi-annual sales)
Thing is, would the steam approach work with music? You need to be logged into an authorised device to use the service, how will that work with mobile music devices?
I wouldn’t say that record labels need to copy Steam’s exact approach; rather, Steam shows that the labels need to massively rethink the way they sell music. Steam was very much different to anything before it, and the music industry needs something completely different as well.
The results need to be formatted differently and even then, it’s a phone survey, how reliable is it. Maybe the downloaders are just SAYING they buy music, perhaps if it had been a survey about music they could have said things like How big is your music collection, how many CD’s/Legitimate downloads do you buy a month, how many illegal downloads, they might have got more honest answers.
This is what I was going to say – I would question the survey’s bias, as it is in the interest of the respondents to get this outcome.
you would take part in an survey anonymously and lie about your answers becuase you think it might benefit you way down the line? bit far fetched?
I still buy music as well as file-share. Usually it comes from the fact that I have friends whom buy the CD’s because they want to and then I just borrow and copy to iTunes.
I just listen to all my music on Youtube lol, haven’t bought music since like 2001. I just think these giant corps struggle to change their business model so they blame piracy.
With everything going digital now I don’t want to own software because it’s tied down to a service as a form of DRM. Why would I buy music like that when I can torrent it and deleted it whenever I want and not have to worry?
Bands should just sell their music on their site and have that as a license to torrent it. That way if they try to sue you for torrenting then you can show them you’ve bought it and be fine.
I am a file sharer (I exaggerate on the sharer bit, as I don’t seed that much) I haven’t bought an album, film or game in 8 years, morality out of the window (Of course) You just can’t compete with free. If it was to all stop now, I would say I’ve had a pretty good run.