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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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 Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 12:41 am Post subject: Study finds pirates 10 times more likely to buy music |
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Study finds pirates 10 times more likely to buy music
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Piracy may be the bane of the music industry but according to a new study, it may also be its engine. A report from the BI Norwegian School of Management has found that those who download music illegally are also 10 times more likely to pay for songs than those who don't.
Everybody knows that music sales have continued to fall in recent years, and that filesharing is usually blamed. We are made to imagine legions of internet criminals, their fingers on track-pads, downloading songs via BitTorrent and never paying for anything. One of the only bits of good news amid this doom and gloom is the steady rise in digital music sales. Millions of internet do-gooders, their fingers on track-pads, who pay for songs they like � purchasing them from Amazon or iTunes Music Store. And yet according to Professor Anne-Britt Gran's new research, these two groups may be the same.
The Norwegian study looked at almost 2,000 online music users, all over the age of 15. Researchers found that those who downloaded "free" music � whether from lawful or seedy sources � were also 10 times more likely to pay for music. This would make music pirates the industry's largest audience for digital sales.
Wisely, the study did not rely on music pirates' honesty. Researchers asked music buyers to prove that they had proof of purchase.
The paper's conclusions emerge just as Sweden's Pirate Bay trial comes to a close. Pirate Bay's four defendants, who helped operate the notorious BitTorrent tracker, were sentenced to a year in jail and fined 30m SEK (�2,500,000) in damages. |
From the age of about 7, I taped music that I liked from the radio. When I grew up, I sought the CDs containing some of these songs I'd liked as a child. For example, I might have 'stolen' a few tracks from ACDC, but eventually I went on to buy most of their CDs. So when Metallica went on their stupid crusade, harrassing kids that had downloaded their music for free, I decided not to buy anything from them again, on principle, though I still enjoy listening to material of theirs that I have obtained illegally.  |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 3:17 am Post subject: ... |
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| You clearly know nothing about internet connections in Somalia. |
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mld
Joined: 05 Jan 2009
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 4:39 am Post subject: |
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Interesting study, though it makes me ask a lot of questions:
1) Is this correlation (illegal/free downloaders being 10 times more likely to pay for music than non-illegal/free downloaders) even relevant or surprising? They are trying to show that A (illegal/free downloading) causes B (more music sales). However, they do not mention a possible factor C (liking music in the first place) that causes both A and B. Are those non-illegal downloaders not interested in listening to music in the first place?
2) What might be more interesting is a look at the variety of music downloaded by the illegal/free downloaders. My guess would be that they buy music from a larger variety of artists than the non-illegal free downloaders, due to the exposure of less mainstream music. This, in my opinion, is why the big bands are causing a ruckus and going on a crusade. Their businesses aren't as lucrative if smaller bands don't have to pay for the publicity for exposure (i.e. the big bands are losing their monopoly because of free and illegal downloads).
That being said my personal opinion on the whole illegal downloading issue is that online music is a "non-competitive good" in that one person's use of a good does not diminish another person's use. I suspect that a good portion of the music people download for free/illegally is not music they would otherwise pay for. Bands that fight illegal downloaded are likely doing a disservice to themselves as they are losing exposure and more potential fans at concerts (not to mention all the impressionable teenagers who will tell all their friends about their favourite songs).... |
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Fishead soup
Joined: 24 Jun 2007
Location: Korea
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| Posted: Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:19 pm Post subject: |
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Fifteen men on a dead mans chest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum
Drink and the devil has done for the rest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
I can see these guys are big Wayne and Shuster fans.
I am the very morrow of a modern major General |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:39 pm Post subject: |
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| So defiant, Big_Bird... |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:46 pm Post subject: |
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| mld wrote: |
Interesting study, though it makes me ask a lot of questions:
1) Is this correlation (illegal/free downloaders being 10 times more likely to pay for music than non-illegal/free downloaders) even relevant or surprising? They are trying to show that A (illegal/free downloading) causes B (more music sales). However, they do not mention a possible factor C (liking music in the first place) that causes both A and B. Are those non-illegal downloaders not interested in listening to music in the first place?
2) What might be more interesting is a look at the variety of music downloaded by the illegal/free downloaders. My guess would be that they buy music from a larger variety of artists than the non-illegal free downloaders, due to the exposure of less mainstream music. This, in my opinion, is why the big bands are causing a ruckus and going on a crusade. Their businesses aren't as lucrative if smaller bands don't have to pay for the publicity for exposure (i.e. the big bands are losing their monopoly because of free and illegal downloads).
That being said my personal opinion on the whole illegal downloading issue is that online music is a "non-competitive good" in that one person's use of a good does not diminish another person's use. I suspect that a good portion of the music people download for free/illegally is not music they would otherwise pay for. Bands that fight illegal downloaded are likely doing a disservice to themselves as they are losing exposure and more potential fans at concerts (not to mention all the impressionable teenagers who will tell all their friends about their favourite songs).... |
Filled with wisdom. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Thu Apr 23, 2009 8:12 pm Post subject: |
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Yes, this only confirms that people who like music are more likely to both legally and illegally download and buy it.
That is why I agree with you, Big Bird, that the anti-Napster lawsuit by Metallica and Dr. Dre and the anti-piracy laws are stupid and against their own best interests, not to mention those of listeners. |
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Fishead soup
Joined: 24 Jun 2007
Location: Korea
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| Posted: Thu Apr 23, 2009 8:35 pm Post subject: |
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Study finds Pirates 10 times more likely to
(a) Have a parrot on their shoulder
(b) Wear a three cornered hat
(c) Have a wooden leg.
(d) Drink rum and sing songs of hunting for treasure.
(e) Force people to walk the plank.
(f) Have a skull and cross bones flag.
(g) Like eating at Long Johns Silver especially the Hush Puppies. |
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