Very interesting numbers in this report. All the talk about pirates stealing music these days does not seem to be backed up by these results.
“…company looked at 10,000 files managed by the PublicBT BitTorrent tracker, and found that only 2.9% of them were music. That’s way behind porn videos (35.8%), feature films (35.2%), and TV shows (12.7%). Even generic non-gaming software sparked more interest, with 4.2% of all pirated files.”
So do pirates not care about music? I have always felt that if you provide a fast and easy way to get music online, at a fair price, consumers will use it. Our time is valuable and we will pay some amount of money to save time. Downloading from a torrent is not as simple as iTunes. I wonder what would happen if you priced movies dirt cheap and made them available to buy online immediately, would it impact movie pirates?
Music piracy used to be a big deal, but nowadays most pirates don’t even bother.
Envisional, which helps companies prevent brand fraud, counterfeiting, and piracy, was recently commissioned by NBC Universal to look at the use of copyrighted material on the Internet.
The company looked at 10,000 files managed by the PublicBT BitTorrent tracker, and found that only 2.9% of them were music. That’s way behind porn videos (35.8%), feature films (35.2%), and TV shows (12.7%). Even generic non-gaming software sparked more interest, with 4.2% of all pirated files.
In other words, people most don’t care about music enough to pirate it. Although at least music came in ahead of anime.
The decline in music piracy is partly because iTunes did a lot to make digital music easy, removing one incentive to use file-sharing services like Napster (in the old days) and LimeWire (more recently). There’s no question that iTunes moves a lot of music: it sold 5 billion songs just between June 2008 and February 2010, and the Beatles sold more than five million songs through the service in less than two months.
Then again, the Beatles haven’t made a new recording in more than 40 years. Who else is selling millions of downloads per month?
Here’s another way of looking at it: maybe the CD declines of the last few years have nothing to do with piracy or the move to digital. Maybe recorded music is going the way of sheet music in the early 20th century.
The 56-page PDF of the full study is available here.
via Forget About Buying Music Online — People Don’t Even Want To STEAL Music.
is that total files or percentage of content… because music is a lot smaller size than movies, games etc.
weird comparison when the music files are much smaller, they need to count the downloads not the file size also… also there are so many places from which to rip music effectively unlike movies and games which have less(SAFE) places to access them (I am well educated on this matter from my 18 yr old son*smile*).
my points exactly!
my son can find ANY piece of music online in an instant… he will at times search and search for certain games and there is a bounty of places to find music… he would never trust or touch BitTorrent… hes wayyy more “indie” than that. He rips music that we cannot find for sale anywhere at times.. I mean REALLY obscure stuff too(not that I encourage this behavior *blinks*)
I don’t even know how to use bit torrents!
You can find some pretty obscure and weird music on Torrents if you know where to look and how to use them… Trust me I do it all the time and I find some really weird/cool stuff. And about trusting torrents… if you know what you’re doing, the other random places to find music online can be a lot more harmful that torrents shared by other music lovers.
I think it makes for interesting discussion and fuel for asking more questions.
Pirates are not killing the poor sales of music these days. Case in point Cake with 44,000 units debuting at #1. Who was out downloading the new Cake album vs. buying it?
I can find nearly anything on the torrents, but to get it and listen is not nearly as fast and easy as launching iTunes on my iPhone, type is a search, click buy and listen. My time is worth $.99 or $9.99. If iTunes does not have it, then I need to think of other sources. And as Dave said, I think there are many music consumers who have no idea how to use it.
Movies – I see a couple issues. The release schedule. In theaters first, and then DVD some months later. If someone wants to watch it at home they have only one solution torrents and with adult the tube sites as well. Price, especially in adult… $30+ for a single movie is ridiculous. Nobody wants to pay that much for a movie to watch just once or twice. Drop all movies to $9.99 and release on DVD and VOD day of theater release. Yes, that will impact theaters, but would it have a greater upside on sales of movies? And is going to the theater more of a activity event?
I think what is obvious… adult and mainstream movies have a big problem staring them in the face. They are going to have to change the traditional world they have been living in for years. Adult is already in serious crisis mode with some studios on the brink of going out of business for the last year or so. DVD sales have shrunk by up to 50%, paid VOD sales are being eaten by the free tube sites.
Price, selection and convenience are very important to consumers, always have been. Too expensive, I will and can find it cheaper. Don’t have what I want when I want it, I will find it somewhere. Not convenient, I will pay something for ease of access.
Bit torrents. Another good name for a band.
I think what is wrong with the music industry is the music itself….Very few bands today inspire or envoke an emotion from me. KISS did when I was in grade school and still do today..Motley Crue did it, Bon Jovi did it, Poison did it…Nirvana did it, Alice In Chains did it…but after that…Jet had a chance, but fizzled….what music today really inspire or envoke an emotion????
For me, Angels & Airwaves. I almost listen to one of their 3 albums weekly.
@Michael: Honestly…never heard of them…I will check them out….
Hi Michael – interesting article !
Got me thinking :
According to IFPI digital report 2011, 95% of music downloads are illegal
http://www.dailyrindblog.com/?p=5028
The report also says that the trade value of the digital music market worldwide is US$4.6 billion (p7) and that 29% of the recording industry revenue is now digital (p7)
http://www.ifpi.org/content/library/DMR2011.pdf
If you quickly do the maths, it means that the total revenue of the recording industry is US$15.8 billion (4.6 / 0.29) and that illegal downloads represent a loss of US $92 billion (4.6 x 20)
I don’t buy this !
What makes ppl think that if there were no illegal downloads possible, ppl would actually buy the music? I think they wouldn’t be interested.
Illegal downloads do lead to ppl discovering bands and then go to concerts.
+ it’s no wonder legal downloads are so weak: the offers aren’t very attractive.
BUT Streaming services have proved very successful lately and seem to lead to legal downloads as well http://musically.com/blog/2011/01/25/deezer-says-free-streams-lead-to-paid-downloads/
At the end of the day I’m quite optimistic !
What do you all think?
I personally think that all this attention still being placed on pirated content is too little too late. Free digital content is a fact of life regardless if we agree with it or not. Everyone can preach about how it is lost money, lost jobs, etc, but that will not return things to the way they were and it certainly won’t stop the trading of digital content. Rather then issuing reports and studies to show how much is being lost, spend the time learning how you can survive in this climate and what you can do to take advantage of the situation.
I completely agree.
The fight against piracy that is spreading across many gvt across the globe is praised by the IFPI but you just can’t help thinking that whatever relief these legal actions might bring, it will be very short term.
In France, we did implement a new anti-piracy law recently, called Hadopi. It’s hailed a success, which is a good thing. But I think a great share of this success is due to the simultaneous marketing action for the Cartes Musique’. These subsidized cards give young people 50% off. And the development of great alternatives to illegal downloading (like Beezik, an ad-funded free downloading platform or Deezer a streaming service that redirects towards regular downloading platform) also helps.
And the overall great shape of the live industry might mean that the recording industry is not pivotal anymore and that it won’t make as much money as it did on its own but rather serve as an exposure for live acts.
Anyway Fight against piracy alone just cannot save the industry