Music pirates spend more on music than their legal, law-abiding brethren
The results of a survey, announced yesterday, show that the biggest buyers of music are in fact those that pirate the most. The conclusions come from a poll of 1,000 people between the ages of 16 and 50, with 10% of those admitting they download music illegally -- so it's not a huge slice of the population, and it's by no means conclusive, but I think it just confirms what we already know: it's the music fans that download all the music.It's the music fans that watch live performances and go the extra mile to get the t-shirts and the posters and track down out-of-print B-sides. The survey shows that the average music downloader spends £77 ($126) a year on music -- while the non-downloader only spends £44.
This probably isn't very big news for you in America -- we all know the RIAA are draconian bitches, nothing new, move along now -- but here in the UK we're about to have a law passed that will allow people to be banned from the Internet if they continue to download music illegally after a written warning. It just stinks of poorly-informed lobbying by the BPI -- the British equivalent of the RIAA.
[via The Independent]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Rususeruru said 11:10AM on 11-02-2009
This may be the best thing I've ever read if only for "we all know the RIAA are draconian bitches"
Good job Sebastian.
Also I'm curious how laws like the proposed one to ban suspect copyright violators will be enforced since some bodies are proclaiming access to the internet a fundamental human right... I think it was the EU? Or maybe pirates are sub-human?
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Sebastian Anthony said 11:15AM on 11-02-2009
I'm amazed they let me publish with that line in there... I think they missed it... :)
There are many conflicting ideas in the law courts -- one hand is pushing the necessity of human rights for all, and the other hand is trying to introduce more police state-like controls.
I can only begin to imagine how scary the Internet is for governments. These (politicians) are people that strive to control other people -- be it for good, or bad -- and the Internet is... well... scarily uncontrollable.
This must almost be what anarchy feels like...
Brad Jensen said 11:19AM on 11-02-2009
"Music pirates spend more on music than their legal, law-abiding brethren."
Yes. I do.
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Barry said 11:53AM on 11-02-2009
This sadly is not simply a matter of the BPI being poorly informed: Thing is, industry lobbies aren’t trying to quash file-sharing because they think that piracy is stealing sales, they want to quash it because it’s diluting sales. The big problem is that file-sharing is effectively a form of grassroots advertising, and file-sharers are turned on to many bands and artists that they might not otherwise learn of. That’s great for the artists, but it is perceived as hurting the label’s bottom line: if they farm 10 new artists in a year, market-test them and then focus advertising on one in particular the end result will likely be one artist that shifts a lot of units and a bunch that (because they never really had a chance) do not and get their contracts torn up. They make a truckload of $$ off one act and scrap the others to keep development costs down, and the cycle beginds anew the next year. If instead they farm 10 artists in a year and a comparatively small number of people hear about each band and snatch up their albums, then they have 10 mediocre-selling artists and no way to cull the herd, meaning that their A&R costs will be 10x higher than if they only had one artist selling out of the bunch. Sad but true, but the current model the record industry follows requires that the majority of artists in their catalogs not sell.
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Sebastian Anthony said 11:54AM on 11-02-2009
Ah, fair point! I guess pirates spend more money, but not necessarily on the 'right' artists.
So this is, yet again, looking after the label rather than the artist.
As long as we don't miss out on some potentially-great artist because a label drops them for being unprofitable, I guess we're OK :)