James Delahunty
22 Jun 2005 23:07
According to Entertainment Media Research, legal downloading has made a huge increase and soon will pass out the pirates. A survey concluded that 35% of music listeners now use the Internet to download music tracks legally from music download stores like iTunes and Napster. Piracy is just ahead with 40% of listeners admitting they use P2P services to download and share music with other users on the network/tracker. To get to this conclusion, 4000 consumers gave their answers for the 2006 Digital Music Survey in association with media law firm Olswang.
The survey has one very strange part to its conclusions. It cites Internet viruses and fear of prosecution as reasons why people decide to legally purchase music instead of downloading it from P2P networks. Firstly, it's easier to pick up a virus by email than it is to download a virus while downloading music. There have been security problems with MP3 files in the past with certain players but those holes are fixed by now. Simple use of common sense on P2P networks can help users avoid viruses.
Legal action taken on P2P networks seems to be a reason why people would prefer to purchase music according to the survey, but P2P lawsuits actually target the "biggest sharers of music". However, the misunderstanding among consumers is understandable, as newspapers and websites report the lawsuits as being targeted against people who simply download some music tracks. "Clear deterrents to illegal downloading are emerging, with fear of prosecution running high, and close behind is the sense that unauthorized downloading is 'not fair on the artists,' suggesting that the industry's messages, led by the British Phonographic Industry, are being communicated effectively." John Enser, senior partner at Olswang, said in a statement.
However, a lot of people who download music illegally actually do it simply because they don't support what they see as a "music industry monopoly" where artists don't get what they deserve for their work. Groups like Downhill Battle have been spreading the message of how little an artist gets paid when a consumer buys a CD and actually encouraging that people use P2P and other methods to download music for free to make way for a music industry where these major record labels don't exist.
What about Digital Rights Management?
Checking with news sources I can’t find out whether any questions were asked about the Digital Rights Management (DRM) protection that is included with a legal download. Some consumers believe this is where the game gets unfair. If you buy a track from iTunes and want it on a portable music player, then you need to get an iPod. Although several workarounds are of course possible, most consumers wouldn't know how to do it. Another turn off for consumers is the price of a music download.
A download is typically sold for 99c (79p in UK) in the biggest stores. Some consumers believe this is unfair as you can buy a full album on CD for less than the price of downloading it in a lot of cases. The consumer argument basically is that since it’s a download of data directly over the Internet, it should cost less than buying a CD which was probably shipped from another country/state to the store. Also lets not forget that most music CDs available have no copy protection (although Sony is trying its best to change that now).
So what do the major record labels think?
Digital Rights Management
There is not a major record label that would settle for anything less than DRM protected downloads. The last thing they would want to see is one person purchasing a track from a music download service and then immediately putting it into a shared folder and making it available for the possible millions of people on the P2P network. The belief is basically that with the DRM, more money will be made and piracy rates will be much less.
Price
This is the one that will shock many RIAA/IFPI haters but also it will not surprise them. Many record company execs are actually unhappy with the cost of a music download from iTunes. These people in question believe that downloads should be more individually priced and they shoudl have a say on the price, whereas currently Apple has a 99c price policy. In this case, less popular and older music would actually be cheaper than the current 99c, which would probably solve the problem with CDs being less expensive than downloads in many cases. However, as I'm sure a lot of you have guessed, more popular and newer music would probably get a price hike, at least while the music is "hot".
Peer-2-Peer downloading
While there are a significant number of people sharing music online for free with each other the major record labels will not rest or back down. The belief among them is simply that their tactics are working and even the survey in question in this article would prove that there is some truth to that belief. However, overall P2P usage is still on the rise with the eDonkey2000 network now with a massive almost 5,000,000 users last time I checked. Soon the ed2k network will have twice as many users as FastTrack at any given time. So if P2P use is still on the rise, chances are that music sharing is on a rise too (judging by averages, which I know is flawed, but this survey judges simply by average too).
My Conclusions
Firstly, this survey is actually good news. It proves now to the music industry that yes, P2P users are actually willing to buy music and all that was holding so many back was the complications in buying downloads a couple of years ago; availability was terrible. However, with the numbers of P2P users increasing too, piracy is probably still rising on the Internet, but maybe in the form of movies, software and games piracy more than music. Most downloaders now are actually so used to music downloading that they probably just don't bother downloading enormous amounts of it anymore, especially since movies and software are more available now.
I think you can’t judge which side (the stores or the p2p networks) is winning using these surveys. For example, honesty might not always be used while answering questions for a survey on the street. Was it not the claim of major record labels in the first place that music downloaders were thieves? If they are in fact right and anyone who downloads music for free is a thief, then how could they possibly expect all thieves to be completely honest about their actions? Let's not also forget, fear of prosecution was supposedly a major deterrent, so if you are in the UK on the street and are put on the spot and asked if you do something illegal like downloading music, you might not admit it, even when promised anonymity.
However, in any case, it’s nice to see that digital music is thriving so much still ;-) For a walk down memory lane, I recommend you take a quick look at the following AfterDawn news article from 1999, Digital Music Revolution Begins. I guess Ketola was right and now digital music downloads (legal or illegal) are really making their mark in the music industry's history.
Source:
Reuters