Editorials > Miscellaneous
Music Downloading: More Than Meets The Eyepatch
By Johnny Firecloud
Thursday, April 23, 2009
You’ve undoubtedly heard about the Pirate Bay verdict by now, in which four men were sentenced to a year in jail and fined £2.4 million for their involvement with the file-sharing website, being convicted of copyright infringement in Stockholm last week (April 16th). Despite this highly questionable verdict (if you consider the judge’s membership in two copyright advocacy organizations questionable, that is) however, a recent study has revealed some very interesting news about piracy: it helps the industry.
Those who download illegal copies of music over P2P networks are the biggest consumers of legal music options, according to a new study by the BI Norwegian School Of Management. After examining the music downloading habits of nearly 2,000 young adults, researchers concluded that people who download music illegally are significantly more likely to purchase music than the music lover who uses traditional (antiquated) methods.
The study found that kids between 15 and 20 are more likely to buy music through a paid download than on a physical CD, though most still purchased at least one CD in the last six months. Somehow, despite all indications to the contrary, major labels are still clinging to the absolutely absurd notion that this “at least one CD in the last six months” model is going to be sustainable.
Services like the iTunes Store and Amazon make music buying simple. BI said that those who said they download music illegally (and don’t call it “illegal music”) bought ten times as much legal music as those who never download music illegally. “Most surprising is that the proportion of paid download is so high,” the Google-translated Audun Molde from the Norwegian School of Management told Aftenposten.
Another surprise (not really): major record label EMI isn’t buying BI’s stats. EMI’s Bjorn Rogstad told Aftenposten that the results appear to indicate a correlation between illegal downloads and pay downloads, but there’s no way to know for sure. “There is one thing we are not going to see going away: the consumption of music increases, while revenue declines. It can not be explained in any way other than that the illegal downloading is over the legal sale of music,” Rogstad said.
Granted, the findings are hardly a breakthrough game-changer on the issue. Sample markets, age and economic variation all come into play, and buying trends are currently in the midst of a massive overhaul unlike anything we’ve seen since the CD began replacing cassettes. Despite the current hysteria over it all, it’s important to remember that downloading music is still a new phenomenon. As the millions convert from wasteful and bulky physical formats to the everybody’s-doin’-it Digital Way, a balance will be struck. It won’t be the Wild West forever out there. It’s just a matter of finding out how to find the balance, and some new ideas are popping up that may just be a step in that direction.
As a side note, vinyl will inevitably rise in popularity, because the physical music format will once again return to a state of novelty. Spending $18 on a CD and then turning around to buy the record is financially unsustainable, and that’s been a big contributor to vinyl’s decline in the past twenty years. But when everyone’s tuned entirely into the digital, perhaps the sanctity of vinyl can return. Maybe more artists will build deluxe vinyl release packages, the way they used to. But I digress.
What Rogstad doesn’t seem to understand in his dismissal is that the findings don’t take into account that the music business model has completely scrapped the old rulebook on how consumers buy music. Singles are ruling the market, not albums. I’ve said it before: I used to be proud of my massive CD collection- I’d have them organized and alphabetized with near-obsession. Now they sit stacked in a large covered plastic bin in the corner, awaiting my next pillaging for some extra cash from Second Spin or Amoeba. At some point in the past year or two they quietly became relics, outdated and absurd. Who needs to deal with scratches and a playlist you can’t remember, when you can take your entire music library with you wherever you go? It’s a no-brainer, and it was bound to happen at some point, no matter how much of a fight the labels decide to put up in an attempt to stop the evolution of musical distribution. The pirates aren’t alone anymore, however. Radiohead’s manager has taken up the fight on behalf of the file-sharer as well.
The cracks in the dam are beginning to spread, and once the floodwaters wash all this hand-wringing bullshit away, some very interesting conversations are bound to take place.
Image Credit: MethodShop
not that i’m all the way on the other side of the fence or anything, but to be fair, we have to acknowledge that this “study” doesn’t really prove anything scientifically… and if it characterizes non-downloaders as “music lovers” as you have, i think that’s a little misleading.
this study does nothing to prove that if illegal piracy was somehow impossible, that today’s pirates wouldn’t instead resort to purchasing music legally. in fact, we all know that they likely would. downloaders are the music junkies, and everyone else is, well, everyone else.
of course, that devil’s advocacy is moot, because copying music always has been, and always will be possible. and even when we purchased nothing but music with every last dollar and cent we earned or found, it still wasn’t enough, and we still had our friends dub us tapes, burn us cds, and send us albums over the ‘net.
a more relevant discussion would be what crimes would music addicts be willing to commit to get their hands on music, if simply downloading the music illegally wasn’t an option. i know some metalheads and backpackers that wouldn’t think twice about busting into your house and stealing your tv if they had to, to get their fix. shit, i might.
Nicely written. Wouldn’t that be ironic if the cd decline brings about a renewed interest in vinyl? All those people like us who never got rid of, and actually added on to, their record collections would look pretty smart indeed.
I’d hate to think that music addicts would resort to crime to get their hands on otherwise illegal and impossible to find music…..but breaking in to the library of congress or the smithsonian (or that vinyl collector’s warehouse)would be on the list of hypothetical possibilities. I’d hate to have to become a criminal to get my music fix, but you know, I just might if that was my only option. Music addicts have already been branded criminals for downloading, what’s to stop them from taking the logical next step? Very interesting take, skwerl.
thanks… just been thinking that way about it a lot lately. most of our readers would readily admit that they can’t live without music. and for most downloaders, it’s more of a compulsion than a premeditated scam. there are bills on the books that decriminalize violent offenses if they are committed by addicts- i don’t agree with them- but there is a school of thought that believes these people can’t help it, and are simply sick, rather than criminal. i have this sci-fi fantasy where downloaders are sent to support groups to kick their music addictions.
If that’s a fantasy, I can’t imagine what kind of nightmares you have…. Unless that movie ends with a Clockwork Orange-type finale smirk. Then we’re cool.
haha well yes, that one does. downloaders anonymous would start like traffic school- show up, do the dance, go back to flying down the 405 at 95mph the next day. but yeah, fantasy was not the right word. vision just sounded way too pretentious. my imagination is a scary place in general though. i have new orwellian / kubrickian / pahlaniukian visions of the future like every day. especially with the news these days… the tea party bullshit, people getting stabbed over pop-tarts…
Pop Tart crumbs literally falling from my mouth as I type this… knives out bitches…
One day out of nowhere I just started buying vinyl. Stopped getting CDs and DVDs. I don’t even own a record player yet and i’ve already got a vinyl collection. Some bands get a little over pricey on their vinyls though. But Arcade Fire has the best vinyl prices I’ve seen for new music. So yeah, vinyl is coming back. Just keep the fucking price down.
I read elsewhere that this study actually compared the purchases of people who downloaded ‘free’ music versus people who didn’t. Their definition of ‘free’ was legal AND illegal downloads. In other words, if you downloaded an album from a band’s website, or you downloaded a file from MySpace (because the artist allowed you to), or you used a free song download card from Starbucks, then you were one of the people who downloaded ‘free’ music. That’s a very bad set of data if they didn’t distinguish between people who pirated music versus people who legally downloaded free music.
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