Yet Again, File Sharing Correlated To Biggest Buyers
from the how-many-times-do-we-need-to-cover-this? dept
At this point, it’s not a surprise since we’ve covered this in study, after study, after study, after study, after study, after study before, but Joe Karaganis’ recent “tease” of his latest “copy culture” study shows that the biggest “pirates” also tend to be the biggest buyers.
The study also highlights (yet again) just how much people share with friends and family — something that no amount of copyright “enforcement” is going to stop. That’s something that most people think is completely normal and “reasonable” for the most part. So it’s little surprise that large parts of people’s music collections seem to come from friends and family, especially the younger generation (where it’s even greater than downloading from the internet).
The end result is the same as always. The problem is not “piracy.” It’s just a symptom of failing to properly respond to the market. The market doesn’t “just want stuff for free.” I keep seeing people claim that piracy definitively decreases sales, but we know that’s not true. We’ve seen some cases where it has helped sales — so what explains the difference? I’d posit it’s pretty simple: piracy decreases sales if you don’t embrace what your fans want. However, if you do treat your fans like fans, give them ways to support you, don’t act like they’re criminals, and actually adapt to the changing market, you can turn what would otherwise be a negative into a positive. But it involves quite a bit of work, and that’s the big challenge.
Filed Under: buyers, fans, file sharing, research
Comments on “Yet Again, File Sharing Correlated To Biggest Buyers”
Prediction
Cue the trolls missing the point, attacking Mike and generalizing TD readers as freetards/freeloaders.
At this point it’s not even a prediction, it’s a fact heh.
In any case it should be interesting to see how they’ll twist this to fit their anti-piracy agenda.
Wrong Target
Reminds me of a recent observation my coworkers and I made.
I rarely buy DVDs, I find them to be horribly inconvenient. So when I do, I usually buy a collector’s edition of whatever I’m buying. I’m a consumer whore and I love pack-in extras. Then I stick the disk in the player, start it up, and am treated to several minutes of unskippable propaganda telling me how evil it is to “steal” movies.
What. The. Fuck.
Not only did I bother to *pay* for something I find mildly inconvenient and I could easily get for free online, but I went the extra mile and paid significantly more to get a pack-in art book or action figure or something. And *I’m* the person you decide to lecture on the evils of piracy?
The same thought process usually follows when I pay twice the normal retail price for a “Collector’s Edition” of some video game only to be greeted by some crazy onerous DRM system…
I’m starting to think these content producers are attacking their customer base in this way because they feel a need to attack SOMEONE and we’re the only targets they can see. It seems the only sensible solution is to just stop dealing with them altogether…
This is pretty useful analytical data if the labels and Hollywood ever wanted to target a profitable market.
I wonder what the operational costs of a torrent distribution structure would cost them? If they cut out digital distribution retailers, they could keep that typical 30% cut that Apple and Spotify take.
Re: Re:
right
Looking at the US numbers, 45% of P2P user’s music is obtained without purchasing (download/copied from friends), versus 26% of those who don’t use P2P.
This is assuming that ripped means purchased on CD and ripped and bought means downloaded.
So yes, they purchase a higher amount of music, because on a whole, they listen to more music. But of what they obtain, non-P2P users actually purchase a higher percentage of the music they obtain, which is far more important for the music industry, because if they can increase their listening habits, statistically, they would make more money than they would from P2P users.
Re: Re:
But if you boot those who illegally download off of the net, then sure they won’t continue stealing any songs,
BUT THEY WON’T BE BUYING ANY EITHER!!!
So, if six/three strikes laws are successful at removing IP offenders from the net the record companies will not have their music “stolen”, and they also will have less of it bought.
Again, the record companies are more than willing to cut off their nose to spite their face.
Prediction
So those who pirate the most also buy the most. So what? That doesn’t lead to the conclusion that enforcement is counterproductive, which is the baseless claim Mike is making. It’s possible that the pirates would buy even more if they weren’t able to pirate.
Re: Prediction
That doesn’t lead to the conclusion that enforcement is counterproductive
You’re right, the fact that there is no piracy anymore proves that enforcement is productive.
Re: Prediction
> It’s possible that the pirates
> would buy even more if they weren’t
> able to pirate.
It’s possible the sun will rise in the west tomorrow also. You’d be stupid to bet on it, though.
Wrong Target
Agreed 100%. I’ve purchased more DVD’s in the last 3 years than ever before, and I mean I have 6 spindles of disks (100 each) full and another (if I can find a spare spindle) that’s full.
I buy them at Superstore or Extra Foods in the previously viewed, discount bins. Why charge $20 for a “new” DVD? They still do.
More people buy them when they are discounted to $10 or less. And people who like to collect will buy them up.
I personally like DVD’s because of the extra features and closed captioning. I don’t want to have to buy Apple TV or plug my laptop into my TV just to view a movie I purchased on iTunes (only purchased one this way because of the inconvenience). I haven’t tried burning it to DVD though I’m sure some studio will call that format shift a form of piracy (or at least our ignorant MP’s do here in Canada).
Point being, people STILL buy even though we often borrow for free from the library.
If you’re not going to let us return it because we don’t like it, then make it cheap so we’re not bothered if it sucks. The mindset was “oh well, at least I didn’t have to pay $20 for this crap, so the 3/$10 bin price wasn’t so bad” and there’s always “Holy crap, this movie was awesome for only $5, I’ll get more because our family had such a fun time together.”
Prediction
It’s equally possible and provable (unlike your claim) that the more available an item is, the more likely it will be purchased because of exposure.
Check the YouTube rants from gamers on the DRM and how counterproductive it is.
Prediction
It is also possible that gravity is caused by Unicorns.
Prediction
whew…
That was the point missing you (yet again).
So, we will say it for you again very clearly. People that pirate music are also the biggest customers. So, treating people that pirate music like thieves is treating your biggest customers like thieves.
treating customers like crap = lost sales
lost sales = less money (just in case you didn’t know that one)
Piracy MAY cause some lost sales, but treating customers like crap WILL cause some lost sales. Doesn’t it make the most sense to tackle the easy problem that you have complete control over?
This is my comment from the original TF article’s board:
The likely simple explanation is that people want to spend on entertainment, but no one can squeeze more than they are capable of paying. The entire 1 download == 1 lost sale argument is a total garbage. Look, I see how my friends’ kids live in one particular college campus. They are OK with sharing the entire terabyte hard drive with a classmate, yet they spend a lot on iTunes, sometimes at the expense of nutrition. I don’t exaggerate. There is no contradiction in their world, and instead of painting this world black-and-white, copyright zealots should at least attempt to understand it.
Re:
Way to fail at data analysis…..
Statistics never lie, but liars always use statistics….
Basic question, would you rather have a higher profit from your existing customer base, or a smaller profit from a currently untapped customer base. Do they have to be mutually exclusive? Why can’t you have both? If you are attacking one of the groups, than it’s pretty obvious why you can’t have both….
You seem to be saying that if the record companies could just ‘squeeze’ a little more money out of their existing customers, thru whatever means possible, they will be fine as they would make more money…
So would you rather have 50% of $1000, or 20% of $5000? You seem to think that having 50% of the $1000 is better (as it’s a higher percentage of the total…)
I’m guessing you work as an accountant for the **AA’s (or are a troll), as that’s the only way anyone could justify this type of backwards thinking, head in the ground type of position.
Wrong Target
What is a DVD?
Is that one of those obsolete plastic things that need to be transferred to an SD card or my DropBox using a 10 year old desktop computer so I can watch a movie?
They still make those things?
Re: Wrong Target
You put movies in your DropBox? You must have a lot of spare bandwidth.
Also watch out, since DropBox is pseudo-cloud, you’re probably infringing some copyright or something by uploading to it. Especially since it makes a copy to *every* device you have linked.
Re: Wrong Target
Whenever the subject of physical media comes up, someone will invariably say this, like they are so cool and hip. Frankly, I love DVDs, and buy a lot of them. They are truly the only way you can watch WHAT you want, WHEN you want to watch it. They are durable, and make an excellent backup when I rip them onto a NAS. I don’t have to worry about the movie I want to see being available, or being somewhere where there is a fast and reliable Internet connection. I buy them once, and can watch them (and do so a lot) for free, anytime I want. No paying for a service, or renting, or going to a noisy, crappy theater. I buy a lot from $5 bins, or from second spin.
I don’t understand where all the hate comes from. I’ve seen people get rid of their collections (because, you know, having one these days is stupid) and then lament the fact they can see a particular movie because it’s only available on DVD.
Re: Re: Wrong Target
Everything you just listed as a positive about DVDs is even more true about a torrented MKV of the movie. Except that the MKV is infinitely more convenient, and available for free. So you’re talking about how great it is to pay $5 to be inconvenienced.
Instead of wasting money on printing a useless piece of plastic and then waiting a couple years so I can waste my time digging it out of a bin of crap at Wal Mart, why not just give me the option to download a MKV for $5 upfront? The savings on overhead alone would probably more than offset any theoretical losses from piracy.
PIRATE APOLOGIST!!!!!
Do I win?
Re:
“people want to spend on entertainment, but no one can squeeze more than they are capable of paying”
I couldn’t fail to disagree with you less.
Your sample set of people with zero disposable income is not wide enough. I can personally tell you I would spend more on movies if there was no windowing. The convenience of being able to watch it on VUDU combined with the regular release media exposure would work on me. I often forget about movies that I wanted to watch before they get to the format I want to watch them in. That is an under-served customer leaving money on the table.
On the music front – the name of the game for me is convenience. I use iTunes because it’s dead simple for me. I do some downloading of legally obtainable content when it is not available on iTunes, but it’s a pain in the a**, so I’d rather pay the 99 cents.
Don’t forget to offer the RtB.
Here’s one recent point that the trolls keep bringing up that appears to be seriously contradicting.
On the other hand, trolls keep insisting that independent labels are the ones hurt most by piracy and we keep ripping them off. This is used to explain the fact that despite years of claiming that they’re dying, the recording industry still isn’t dead. On the other hand, trolls keep insisting that despite what anyone says, all that pirates ever download are label stuff in the Top 20, and anyone who supports independent labels effectively have no social life. This is used to counter claims that independent labels are far more friendly towards their consumers and people should show interest in them.
Trolls seem to switch between the above excuses when it fits them best or to insist that everyone is a psychopath for disagreeing with the RIAA, so here’s a question I’d like answered… which is it? Pirates only go after Top 20 stuff, or not?
a study ought to be carried out as to the biggest entertainment industry disbelievers, the biggest entertainment industry liars and the biggest load of bullshit reasons why no one in the entertainment industries take any notice of the truth. they want to maintain control, are not interested in their own artists, are not interested in how much money is supposedly lost and not passed on to the artists or to the industries themselves, or who else gets screwed in the process.
Re:
Yeah, when I pirate it means I’ve ran out of extra money for entertainment. You would not get anymore sales from me even if you did stop piracy.
But by trying to stop it, you’ll propably push for bad laws that break the internet and/or use DRM that punishes paying customers, both of which piss me off and move me over into the non-customer catagory.
That’s like a doctor trying to keep from amputating a patient’s leg and winding up outright killing them instead.
That’s reminds me of I saw public service announcement of this very thing a few hours ago while I was sleeping with TV on.
Re:
Hell, it’s worse than that because niether the leg or the patient was in danger of being lost before the doctor got there
Prediction
Except for the problem that you will always be able to pirate music and the experience in France shows stronger enforcement does not lead to higher purchasing levels. So it is possible only if you decide to disregard the current evidence.
Re: Prediction
HADOPI shows nothing of the sort, and in fact such a claim is plainly counterintuitive.
The reality is that I’m seeing kids on message boards admitting what we all know: pirating music has become more difficult to do compared to 5 or 10 years ago. Not impossible, but more difficult. And when that’s the case, people turn to other ways to consume: YouTube, Spotify, iTunes, etc.
Re: Re: Prediction
“The reality is that I’m seeing kids on message boards admitting what we all know: pirating music has become more difficult to do compared to 5 or 10 years ago.”
First. Link? Or are you talking about 5 and 10 year olds as big content has ensured that anyone on-line is aware of The Pirate Bay.
Second. Why are you hanging out on kids message boards?
Are you a kid, paid shill, or something darker?
Re: Re: Prediction
“And when that’s the case, people turn to other ways to consume: YouTube, Spotify, iTunes, etc.”
Ignoring your unsupported claims of how difficult it is to pirate – apparently based on a quick reading on message boards rather than any real data – you’re coming close to agreeing with Mike! Well done.
Yes, those services are the ones people turn to – when people are allowed to. All involve regional restrictions. Some (iTunes, from your example) are often too expensive for impulse purchases, especially with movies. All of them only came into legal existence after the RIAA had to dragged kicking and screaming into accepting and licencing them. YouTube still has lawsuits against it, and I’ll bet that they’d still be shut down tomorrow if they had their way. All have incomplete catalogues, largely due to product being withheld from them by the RIAA.
It doesn’t matter how easy or hard it is to pirate – if the legal alternatives are too expensive, too restrictive or simply don’t exist, people will pirate – even those who buy whenever that’s possible.
That’s the point here. Maybe if they worked with the people trying to give a legal option to the buying public, they wouldn’t be pirating as much. Yet, the only solutions they’ve come up with on their own involve attacking the very same people who are their biggest customers. Don’t you see the problem there?
Re: Re: Prediction
“HADOPI shows nothing of the sort, and in fact such a claim is plainly counterintuitive.”
Yet, in complete contradiction to your comment, the French government is already considering plans to scrap HADOPI entirely as it has been a huge waste of money with no visible reduction in piracy whatsoever.
“The reality is that I’m seeing kids on message boards admitting what we all know: pirating music has become more difficult to do compared to 5 or 10 years ago. Not impossible, but more difficult.”
Ah yes, because a few kids on message boards saying something beats any empiricial data. /s
Sorry, but I visit lots of message boards too. Namely the XDA forums, and the only time I’ve seen people complaining about something that could be related to piracy is when people want something that only leads to a dead link (Megaupload or something similar). And even then, we usually find what we’re looking for. And by find what we’re looking for I refer to tools and ROMs and whatnot.
Pirating music though, has if anything, become much easier. To the point that the average non-computer literate person knows it can be done, and with minimal guidance can learn to do it themselves.
“And when that’s the case, people turn to other ways to consume: YouTube, Spotify, iTunes, etc.”
Hmm. So you mean to tell me that the way to beat piracy is by offering people legal alternatives that are easier for them to turn to than piracy? THE HELL YOU SAY! (Wow. I wonder if someone has told Mike about this, or you know, the rest of us on Techdirt who’ve been saying this FOR YEARS!)
Oh yeah, also, while those are options, you like other ACs fail to note that they are severely restricted. Insofar as available music, geographical restrictions, and so on and so forth.
So it falls right back to what I said elsewhere in this article. They are telling the people that they’ll take what they want to give them, how and when they want to give it to them and like it.
If you aren’t making your product available as easily as possible and to the entire world then you will still have piracy. That’s a fact.
YouTube. Not available in all countries. Even in countries where it is available there are a number of unavailable items blocked by various groups like GEMA.
Spotify. Not available in all countries. Not all content is available on it.
iTunes. Not available in all countries. Various restrictions in place regarding what payment methods are accepted, on a per country basis.
Re: Prediction
HADOPI shows nothing of the sort, and in fact such a claim is plainly counterintuitive.
The reality is that I’m seeing kids on message boards admitting what we all know: pirating music has become more difficult to do compared to 5 or 10 years ago. Not impossible, but more difficult. And when that’s the case, people turn to other ways to consume: YouTube, Spotify, iTunes, etc.
Prediction
How long did I take to you figure that out,Everyone was trying to you that since forever. Looks like AJ finally getting his head out of own ass at for awhile.
In radioland, there is no longer a place to hear new music. It’s all programmed to play what is paid to put out and then is repeated hour after hour.
Music buyers want to hear the new stuff first to make up their minds on if something is worth it or not before buying. That option no longer is available. To quote Niel Young, P2p is the new radio where you can do that.
Personally, I wouldn’t waste the bandwidth to download music. I don’t consider it worth the time. But then I don’t hear new music to find something I might like because of that too. I’m no longer exposed to new stuff to find that occasional that might be interesting.
Can’t wait for these dinosaurs to finally go bankrupt. I’ll go out and party for that excuse alone when it happens. Top 20? Please don’t think I would waste my time with music that all sounds the same.
Re: Re:
Makes you wonder why Alan Freed was vilified, oh ya, they were trying to kill rock and roll. Ever the same thing, let’s censor what we don’t like out of existence.
Prediction
“So what? That doesn’t lead to the conclusion that enforcement is counterproductive, which is the baseless claim Mike is making.”
That “so what” was you dismissing a valid point, that contrary to popular and fictitious belief pirates DO NOT just pirate. They are in fact, on average, better consumers than the average person.
Also, while that simple fact might not lead directly to the conclusion that “enforcement is counterproductive”, it can’t be dismissed outright. It must be factored in conjunction with other facts and data about enforcement. Namely, that all attempts at it are thus far not working, and more importantly, they fail to address the main point of “why do people pirate?”
Before you go on some kind of rant, ignore the “they just don’t want to pay” bit. Stop and think. Obviously, per this data, they are quite willing to pay. So they must get something from pirating that they don’t from purchasing a good.
We’ve already got one great example in the comments. Paying customers are treated like thieves, talked down to like thieves, and being sold inferior products (laden with DRM and unskippable messages wagging a finger at them, FOR SOMETHING THEY PAID FOR).
“It’s possible that the pirates would buy even more if they weren’t able to pirate.”
It’s also possible they wouldn’t. That’s a non-point.
It’s also possible that tomorrow I’ll snap my fingers and no one in the world will pirate a single thing, but that still won’t mean you’ll make any more money whatsoever.
Why? Because you’re still trying to dictate terms to the market and still telling them they’ll take what you want to give them, how and when you want to give it to them, and they’ll damn well like it (and if not, they can f*ck right off).
See what that does? That doesn’t get people to want to give you their money.
But you know what? I’m not going to go off explaining things to you. They’ll fly right over your head and you’ll just respond with some pendejada like you usually do. So I’m ending this here.
Re: Prediction
Thank you for introducing me to the word “pendejada”
Re: Re: Prediction
Lol. You’re welcome! That’s why I’m glad I’m bilingual and grew up with relatives that speak proper Spanish (as well as Tex-Mex, does that make me trilingual?).
There are certain things that need to be said that the English language just doesn’t do justice to. For that you’ve got Spanish.
Older Spanish speakers tend to know the best curse words/insults. : ) I suggest if you know any you start listening to them talk and asking about things like that.
Re: Re: Prediction
I second the motion.
Re:
Schr?dinger’s pirate: until he is convicted, you can’t know if he was pirating the Top 20 or the indies.
Re: Re:
I wanna see the wave function adapted to pirating
Re: Re: Re:
You mean f(wav). Seems Windows-centric.
Prediction
Enforcement isn’t counterproductive?
One of the reasons Pirate Bay moved to the Cloud, which now hampers enforcement against them, was because of enforcement.
http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-moves-to-the-cloud-becomes-raid-proof-121017/
I keep telling ya, EVEN IF counter-productive, the biz LIKES it!
But we keep getting Mike mangling statistics to say what he wants them to — adequately pointed out above — and then the fanboys counter it with boilerplate “no, you’re wrong”.
Meanwhile, Big Media has gone round ya to directly take down Megaupload, and SOON others, wink, wink…
>>> But hey, I just discovered this morning tht The Pirate Bay is no longer useful! Wanted some TV shows from the 60’s, which is entirely legit, TV rips of over 40 year-old material that copyright has actually expired on before they changed the terms unilaterally, and guess what? TPB is converting to “magnet links” instead of .torrent files! They’re actually crippling P2P torrenting by forcing you to use specific clients, plus a bombard of whatever ads and nonsense to get that. SO, looks like P2P is dead or soon will be! — Be a better story for you, Mike, or Timmy, than the irrelevant crap you’ve been putting up.
Re: I keep telling ya, EVEN IF counter-productive, the biz LIKES it!
Since I doubt you can even understand the numbers that are given, care to explain, in detail, how these numbers have been mangled to show what he wants?
Re: I keep telling ya, EVEN IF counter-productive, the biz LIKES it!
How should someone go about telling you that you’re wrong, then, if they don’t actually say “you’re wrong”? Is it OK if they just explain the ways in which you’re wrong, or is the mere fact that they’re pointing out your errors “boilerplate”?
If you haven’t stopped reading already, you should know that magnet links are basically just torrent file IDs instead of locations. You still end up getting and using torrent files! You just get them from peers instead from a specific server (single point of failure). It doesn’t require anything different on your part, other than client support, so it’s really no less convenient than a direct link. Every major client supports magnet URIs; surely some of them are to your liking, and even if you use one of the obscure ones, it’s quite likely all you have to do is ask the developers to add support for magnet URIs. If ads are a problem in your preferred client, they’re usually easily blocked with a basic firewall and publicly-available blocklists.
So…TPB is just as easy to use as it ever was. There’s no story here.
Re: I keep telling ya, EVEN IF counter-productive, the biz LIKES it!
“Meanwhile, Big Media has gone round ya to directly take down Megaupload, and SOON others, wink, wink…”
Megaupload is going to come back. That’s a fact. And while it was taken down, a point I’ll grant you, piracy has not stopped because of it. If anything it’s improved because people realized they needed better methods to do it and links to share to find content.
“But hey, I just discovered this morning tht The Pirate Bay is no longer useful!”
Empirically false.
“Wanted some TV shows from the 60’s, which is entirely legit, TV rips of over 40 year-old material that copyright has actually expired on before they changed the terms unilaterally, and guess what? TPB is converting to “magnet links” instead of .torrent files!”
This isn’t news. They went to magnet links almost a year ago (if not longer). They actually work much better than torrent links.
“They’re actually crippling P2P torrenting by forcing you to use specific clients, plus a bombard of whatever ads and nonsense to get that.”
No, again, you’re talking about something without having a clue about that of which you speak. Like usual.
You DO NOT have to use specific torrent clients. As long as the one you’re using is relatively modern (as in a version of the application that was released in the last year or so), you can download from magnet links.
Also, there are ways to download magnet links WITHOUT having to use a torrent client.
Another thing is, there are no ads. Well there can be, but they are only in CERTAIN torrent clients. And by “ads” I mean there are notices alerting people to new bands, short films, etc that are being legally distributed. It’s taking advantage of people’s appetite for music and all that jazz and is giving artists a better opportunity to get their name out there and get people into their music or whatnot.
“SO, looks like P2P is dead or soon will be!”
Oh, so in that case, the war on piracy is over and we can all stop listening to you and AJ and bob and the other idiot brigade harp on about piracy and how dominant and widespread it is. Right?
Yeah, didn’t think so. Man OotB, I’ve met some idiots before, but you are truly one of a kind and leaps and bounds more moronic than anyone else I’ve ever had the (non) privilege of meeting.
“Be a better story for you, Mike, or Timmy, than the irrelevant crap you’ve been putting up.”
Mhm, which you’d know nothing about seeing as how you’ve admitted multiple times since your return that you don’t even bother reading the articles. So how then could you know it is “irrelevant”?
Game, set and match. Win goes to the AC, namely me.
Prediction
Thank you for saving my time to reply him. He missed the point as I thought he would. have a + insightful
correlation does not equal causation
And here I thought that these industries like investing their money into DRMs,anti-piracy commercials, lawsuits, lobbying, patents, lawsuits, and copyrights instead of improving formats, investing in innovation, creating better products, and/or trying to be competitive.
I keep telling ya, EVEN IF counter-productive, the biz LIKES it!
“They’re actually crippling P2P torrenting by forcing you to use specific clients, plus a bombard of whatever ads and nonsense to get that. SO, looks like P2P is dead or soon will be!”
Well, looks like the piracy problem solved itself then.
Can we stop trying to spawn a new SOPA now?
Re:
So I obtain 1 thousand mp3 tracks per month and buy 100 but my non-p2p friend only buys 1 album per 2 months after being exposed to 20-30 tracks via traditional means. From your perspective it’s better to sue the one buying 100 tracks and annoy the one buying 1 album with anti-piracy propaganda. Sounds amusingly fair and productive.
I keep telling ya, EVEN IF counter-productive, the biz LIKES it!
wow.. Did u manage to understand whatever he wanted to say?
Prediction
That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
(You know who)
Prediction
“It’s possible that the pirates would buy even more if they weren’t able to pirate.”
It’s also possible that pirates/customers have a limited discretionary income (especially in this economy and job market) and they use file sharing as a means of finding what they want to buy and they’re simply not able to purchase more because they have families and mortgages, etc.
You seem to live in a fantasy world where people who infringe copyrights are multimillionaires who just choose not to spend money on the media they enjoy or maybe even burn that money that they would have spent.
Most of these pirates/customers are likely lower and middle class people who have other, more pressing expenditures. And your response might be, “do without!” but this is their culture we’re talking about. If their experience of the media is not harming sales because they couldn’t have purchased it all anyway, why should they just be locked out of their own culture just to spite their poverty?
Re: Prediction
I’d typed up something myself, but you’ve said it so much better. This is exactly the reason I pirate.
+1 for insightful
I’d like to add that free online music ‘alternatives’ aren’t always true alternatives since people who work for a living often listen to music at times when they have no access to internet and don’t have the spare time to spend hours browsing and listening online during their free time.
Re:
Yep, it does not. It does equal foolishly lost revenue though.
Prediction
I’ll tell you a story about copyright:
Just recently, I bought the Game of Thrones Season 1. On the first disc is damn near twenty minutes of ads for ALL of HBO’s programming. Unskippable. Unalterable. Unfavorable. Unbeatable.
So the next season? I already have it. No ads. Watch any time I want.
By the way, I bought the first season at a pawn shop for half the price. So HBO got no money from me. They just showed me why I won’t pick up any of their series from them because they believe in showing me add on MY dvds of THEIR show.
So which is the worst offense? My commitment to not being treated like a criminal or my use of the First Sale Doctrine to get a cheaper price?
Re: Prediction
I think they do this on purpose to get a someone pirate then sue for enormous amount of money is more “profitable” but in long run they’ll lose because they’re not going by the #1 rule of business the costumer’s always right
Prediction
“(You know who)”
Yeah, Friedrich Nietzsche.
Prediction
It’s possible that the pirates would buy even more if they weren’t able to pirate.
Well, first, even as you have admitted, it’s simply not possible to stop all piracy. It’s also impossible to stop most (or easy) piracy without significantly impacting freedoms that western democracies were founded on.
More to the point, while it is possible that there are a few pirates that might buy more if piracy was impossible, it is much more likely that most people have a relatively fixed disposable budget for entertainment. I certainly fall into that category, and I’m a single guy with no dependents and a good paying job. After I pay rent, utilities, food, insurance, gas, from my take home pay (taxes, health, 401k, and auto-diverted savings and IRA contributions already taken out of my salary), I have a limited amount of cash to spend on entertainment and miscellaneous expenses. I need to be picky about what I pay money to, so I only pay for things that are worth the cost. If piracy was made impossible tomorrow, it wouldn’t increase the amount I spent – and it would likely make me even pickier, since I would be unable to preview (aka download illegally ‘try-before-I-buy’) some of the things I do spend money on.
So, do you want to go off on some moral crusade and rant about how people are getting things without paying for them? Go for it, and I’ll fire back in kind about the ethics of denying people culture, knowledge, and information when it costs nothing to let them have it (and doesn’t impact your profits otherwise, either).
Or, would you like to get into a discussion about how companies can make more money by giving their customers what they want?
Re: Prediction
Nice speech, but you’ll never get through to guys like AJ. If given the choice between more money or more control, they always choose more control because they think it will give them more money in the long run. Yet, their steadfast belief flies in the face of all the evidence to the contrary, that more control at this point mostly leads to less money–for many of the reasons you mention. If he’s lucky, he’ll break even, with the influx of new sales balancing out the exodus of pissed off customers.
Guys like AJ also don’t get that the market decides the value of their product, not them. They think more control produces more value for them, but that control comes at the cost of value to the end customer. More and more people are getting that heavy handed enforcement schemes like DRM reduces the value of the product, and the market tends to reflect that. Less value from the customer’s prospective means less gross profits for them. This, of course, doesn’t include the fact that stricter enforcement is NOT free. In the end, once you subtract the increasing cost of enforcement from the bottom line, the net profit for increased control plunges into the red. More control really ends up giving them less value.
Another fallacy that is common for with the strong-IP crowd is that they see the fight as a dichotomy between more control and no control. They think that IP laws are inherently good, with little regard to the actual consequences, so more must be better and that anyone who disagrees with their rhetoric of more control just wants to abolish IP altogether. They don’t get that most people here would prefer a better balance of the interest of all parties involved. And that middle ground at this point is somewhere in the opposite direction of what the strong-IP crowd whats.
Re:
There is correlation, people who pirate are largest consumers. As for causation? Who claims why?
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But the thing is, there’s ton’s of legal, non-paying ways to be exposed to millions of tracks. Spotify is free if you don’t mind using your computer. Pandora is free. Slacker is free. Why do people assume that pirating is the logical choice when there are free alternatives?
Re: Re:
Not available here and I want the tracks on my computer, not streamed =)
I keep telling ya, EVEN IF counter-productive, the biz LIKES it!
TPB has been on magnet links since February. Your blather about specific clients and advertisements is unfounded.
There’s an actual TPB story today though. It’s pretty cool. It’s covered well on Ars Technica, which means Techdirt should pick it up and repost it in 5 to 9 days like every other Ars file sharing and copyright story.
Wrong Target
A DVD is a set of laser-guided tubes on a shiny disk format that holda all sorts of shinies.
I keep telling ya, EVEN IF counter-productive, the biz LIKES it!
LOL, private trackers.
TPB is for n00bs.
And which torrent clients don’t support magnet links?
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Your comment is a perfect example of how the industry thinks.
There they are sitting in a merchandise boat surrounded by a sea of free marketing and instead of using it to float they decide the best option is to drain the sea and walk.
Prediction
Or, would you like to get into a discussion about how companies can make more money by giving their customers what they want?
That. They don’t want a sane discussion.
Just like the homo-sexers
These **AA executives seem to have a reality gap that they fail to understand.
It reminds me of all those people who are homophobic, and say that gay people choose to be that way, yet end up having sex with their own gender in some scandal. To them attraction has always been a choice, when they were younger they were attracted to the man-meat and “chose” to like females because of church/upbringing/whatever. So they think every straight guy chose the same as them, and gays just gave into their urges. What they failed to realize was that most straight people didn’t “chose”, they never had to, it was just a natural attraction.
These executives see something being given away for free, and don’t see the bigger picture. Because to them, in a cutthroat business view, if you can pay less, then you do it. Cut salaries, outsource jobs, use a couple loopholes here, rip of small artists there. So they can’t imagine a world where people who get things for free would turn around and spend money on it later. They can’t grasp it because it doesn’t make business sense. They think people will “chose” to never pay, because they themselves can’t imagine why someone would.
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Aside from the random numbers you create being horribly inaccurate based on the chart, I’ll answer as follows before getting to why you’re not particularly adept at reading charts.
It’s not “whatever means possible,” it’s recouping what they perceive (likely wrongly) to be lost revenue/sales.
The arguments from most pirates seem to break down as follows:
“I don’t have the money to pay for it, so I should just get it for free”
Well, life doesn’t work that way in any type of good or service, so why is music/movies/books/apps any different.
“I just want to try it out, I’ll buy what I want later.”
Then why do so many brag about the size of their libraries, since in theory, if they’re just trying it out, they should delete the music. Nevermind that things like Spotify, Pandora, and Slacker are out there legally and cost no money.
“It costs too much”
See answer #1. I get most of my music used/on sale. Possibly the last album I paid over $5 for was Merriweather Post Pavilion (aside from The Beatles mono set, but that was what I thought was a collector’s item). I will agree that singles should be priced at maybe a quarter, but I don’t set prices. Just because you don’t think something is reasonably priced, doesn’t mean you should get it for free.
“It has copy protection”
No it doesn’t, and it hasn’t for almost 5 years. Now, is it always at the bit rate you want? No, I prefer FLAC, and I think most sites that sell lossless music sell it unbelievably high (why are the albums 3x as much as they are on CD?). I kind of like Bandcamp, I can usually get an album extremely cheap.
“I’m making a stand against evil corporations”
No you’re not. You’re stealing just as much, if not more, from indie labels. Just as many people, as a percent of sales, pirate the new Divine Fits album as they do the new Mumford & Sons album.
Finally, looking at the chart, it appears that file sharers have roughly 1079 legally obtained “music files” in their collection. Meanwhile, non-file sharers have 935. Assuming that’s a $1 a “music file” that’s a difference of $144.
Overall, non-file sharer’s have 571 less non-paid for music files in their collection than file sharer’s. so to get an extra 144 in sales, they have to allow another 571 music files to be obtained theoretically illegal.
That’s a horrible business model, if the point of the business is to maximize profits.
And no, I don’t work for the RIAA and I have pirated music. There’s no real justification, other than I was being cheap and it was there. And trust me, the 95% of the music I pirated was not music that was put out by one of the large record labels.
Now, I actually pay for Spotify (only because I like having my music on the go), and I buy albums from bands I really like (albeit only if it’s on sale).
In the end, it’s partially the recording industry’s fault for not publicizing free, legal services with nearly as much zeal as they do the latest “win” in a copyright lawsuit.
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I have over 2000 pieces of vinyl and over 1000 pieces of plastic purchased over a 35+ year period. I have purchased nothing and “pirated” nothing in the last ten years. Why, because the majority of it is shite and I do not like being labeled a criminal for wanting to spend money on content.
I do however use my public library.
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Go libraries!
Prediction
Actually, yes it can very easily lead to the conclusion that “enforcement is counterproductive”. While I was never a huge file sharer I gave up file sharing a long time ago. Why because of the threats of lawsuits…
Why did I download? So I could ‘try before I buy’. I don’t like to throw $15-20 buck out for an album with one barely acceptable song.
Of course now I have greatly limited my exposure to new music and have largely stopped buying or even listening to new music. Everyone loses; I lose the enrichment from listening to new music; artists and labels lose because I don’t buy their products.
With all the silly DRM I absolutely refuse to buy a ‘license’ to a digital copy I don’t ‘own’. I refuse to pay a $1+ for a song that I can’t legally put on all my devices, that when on a CD costs less than that. So now I buy no new music. It also means no movie purchases since I can’t buy a DVD and rip it to my hard drive. (No great loss as their aren’t many decent movies these days)
It really isn’t that hard of a concept to grasp. “Open” beats “Closed” all the time! Not just in the digital age, but in nearly every facet of life. If you put your product behind a closed door; paywall; Takedown notice… then less people are even exposed to your product, and that means fewer possible sales. It really is THAT SIMPLE!
Re: Again, apologies for the shillish tone here
Allow me to introduce you to…
http://bandcamp.com/
I was pretty much in the same boat as you, and wasn’t going to go out and pay 15-20 bucks on a CD only to find out I only actually liked maybe 2 songs on the thing, so for years I just made do with what free music I could find online(not pirating mind, just the free music ‘amateur’ musicians would compose and post).
Then a while back I ran across this site, and between the ability to preview entire albums, the fact that the prices tend to range between .50 – 1.00 per song, and the fact that you actually own what you pay for, I’ve easily spent more in the past year on music than the rest of my life combined.
If the music industry would take a few hints from how sites like that handled music sales, I could all but guarantee their profits would shoot through the roof(though their abysmal reputation would most certainly hamper them for a number of years).
Prediction
http://www.spotify.com
http://www.hypem.com
http://www.spin.com
http://www.npr.org/series/98679384/first-listen
http://3voor12.vpro.nl/luisterpaal/albums.html
http://music.aol.com/new-releases-full-cds#/1
http://music.aol.com/new-releases-full-cds/spinner#/1
http://www.pandora.com
http://www.slacker.com
http://www.soundcloud.com
http://www.myspace.com
http://www.bandcamp.com
I’m sure I’m missing some, but these are places you can listen to almost any song you want, entirely for free, at least within the US.
You’re from NC. There’s plenty of ways to preview songs/albums before deciding whether to buy them. It’s likely not your fault you don’t know about these places, the music industry has done a horrible job of letting you know most of them exist.
Re: Prediction
For the services you listed, most were setup in spite of the legacy music industry, placing on them an undue excessive burden of fees on them.
The irony of the claims by the majors they gave the public what they wanted when what they really did and are still doing is trying to hold the future back for their industry.
Re:
First of all you assume I don’t mind having my listening habits tracked. I do mind and will not use those services.
Second, do you really think any of the services you mentioned have the depth of songs available with P2P?
Third, if those services are free, legal, and offer all the same options what is the difference between listening to songs on those services and downloading my own personal copy? (other than legality) The result is still the same, I don’t buy the music (at least according to some).
Fourth, streaming music means I need to pay more for the bandwidth needed to maintain the stream. P2P I only need the bandwidth once, not every time I want to listen to a song (which might be 5 times a day).
So I can stream music for 8 hours and use up my monthly data allotment, or I can listen to my library and still have my monthly data allotment available for other uses.
(and no I don’t P2P or otherwise illegally download music)
Prediction
Nope. That’s an argument of your own making, designed to reaffirm your own views.
So any criticism of this article is automatically erroneous? That seems a little ideological, don’t you think?
How about this: the study separated respondents by age group, rather than the size of their pirated music collection or the amount of music purchases they made in a year. What this means is that there is a correlation between the age of the “biggest buyers” and the age of file sharers, but there isn’t actually any indication that those who pirate music specifically are more likely to purchase music as well. This doesn’t mean there’s a particular reason to suggest “copyright enforcement” is needed or useful, but contrary to this article it also doesn’t mean there’s a particular reason to suggest such enforcement is specifically detrimental or useless. The only thing this study suggests is that as people age their interest in purchasing or pirating music declines.
That you, or the author of this article, would misrepresent the study to fit your own agenda is just as ideological as the garbage being presented by the RIAA.
Re: Prediction
“This doesn’t mean there’s a particular reason to suggest “copyright enforcement” is needed or useful, but contrary to this article it also doesn’t mean there’s a particular reason to suggest such enforcement is specifically detrimental or useless”
It’s a push and shove situation in that for the past decade, the labels have pushed for specific types of enforcement whether they be DRM, SOPA/PIPA, etc. and in turn, the pirates shove back i.e. Pirate Bay switching to cloud computing, testing drones that emit wifi signals in random places, etc.
The labels approach to enforcement had had over a decade of experiences that prove it’s methods are not working particularly well. For example, a lot of the lawsuits against copyright infringers end up costing the RIAA more than they actually get from the people they sue (apparently dead people can’t pay out).
The solution outlined in this article points specifically to the label execs using this data as a way to possibly benefit monetarily instead of continuing to increase enforcement.
Re: Prediction
How about this: the study separated respondents by age group, rather than the size of their pirated music collection or the amount of music purchases they made in a year. What this means is that there is a correlation between the age of the “biggest buyers” and the age of file sharers, but there isn’t actually any indication that those who pirate music specifically are more likely to purchase music as well.
False. http://piracy.americanassembly.org/npd-confidential/
Re: Re: Prediction
Re: Re: Re: Prediction
ouch.
Re: Prediction
>Nope. That’s an argument of your own making, designed to reaffirm your own views.
If you’ve read enough threads on TechDirt you would already have seen that trolls derailing TechDirt threads – often, without relevance to whether piracy is actually being discussed – is a highly frequent occurrence.
How you would consider this phenomena to be a fabrication is beyond reasonable ken. What kind of idiot claims to be under attack or criticism when people can verify the facts and see whether it’s true or not?
Re: Prediction
So any criticism of this article is automatically erroneous?
That’s not at all what Ninja said.
That seems a little ideological, don’t you think?
Says the guy who misrepresents others to make his point.
“so to get an extra 144 in sales, they have to allow another 571 music files to be obtained theoretically illegal.
That’s a horrible business model, if the point of the business is to maximize profits.”
if someone obtains for themselves 571 tracks at no cost to you, and then they buy 144 songs from you, it looks like you just made some more profits. how horrible.
THERE'S A PROBLEM WITH THIS STUDY
The study separated respondents by age group, rather than the size of their pirated music collection or the amount of music purchases they made in a year. What this means is that there is a correlation between the age of the “biggest buyers” and the age of file sharers, but there isn’t actually any indication that those who pirate music specifically are more likely to purchase music as well. This doesn’t mean there’s a particular reason to suggest “copyright enforcement” is needed or useful, but contrary to the content of this article it also doesn’t mean there’s a particular reason to suggest such enforcement is specifically detrimental or useless. The only thing this study suggests is that as people age their interest in purchasing or pirating music declines.
Re: THERE'S A PROBLEM WITH THIS STUDY
The study separated respondents by age group, rather than the size of their pirated music collection or the amount of music purchases they made in a year. What this means is that there is a correlation between the age of the “biggest buyers” and the age of file sharers, but there isn’t actually any indication that those who pirate music specifically are more likely to purchase music as well
False. As Joe clarified in a post today, they only looked at those who file shared. So it DOES in fact show that those who pirate buy more.
http://piracy.americanassembly.org/npd-confidential/
Re: Re: NO, REALLY. THERE'S A PROBLEM WITH THIS STUDY.
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Wouldn’t having your listening habits tracked allow them to tailor recommendations, making it easier to find music you like?
Yes, they do have the same depth of songs that P2P have. Is it perfect, no, but there’s plenty of bands on those services that I can’t find on the pirate bay or other torrent sites.
Theoretically, the recording artists make an infinitesimal amount of money each time their song is played, so even on a free service, they still have a chance to make money.
I can’t speak to the bandwidth. I have unlimited data at home and on my phone. I can see how it could be an issue. I can’t find any logical reasoning for the cost of bandwidth in America.
Re: Re:
Having my listening habits tracked may indeed allow them to tailor recommendations. However I value my privacy and do not want my information sold to the highest bidder; used to target me with various advertising (that I don’t want); used to calculate how much I am willing to pay for a given product (The same site offering me a different price than you for the same product at the same point in time); kept to be given to courts, companies or others. Working in IT and legal I know the value of the data that can be logged and I know the nefarious purposes that it is used for.
Theory and practice are pretty far apart. From what I have read it is far more likely for the recording industry to take those micro-payments and fail to disburse them to the artists due to ‘excessive expenses’.
The bandwidth issue is fairly easy to understand once you know who the major players are. There are FAR TO FEW players. A quick look at the holding of major internet providers such as Comcast or Time Warner will explain it. When you own the content and the delivery method you can make a lot more money because you can double dip.
Prediction
Part of my entertainment budget is $9 a month going to Grooveshark. I switched to it from a yearly Pandora subscription about a year ago. I wasn’t just talking about music.
Prediction
Yeah, just wanted to say, I didn’t mean for my reply to sound so dickish. The point in my head sounded better 🙂
For a real point. I don’t really have a problem with Grooveshark, except that they’re literally not paying artists any of the money they get from subscriptions. Why pay $9 for that instead of $10 for spotify, which theoretically pays artists (though the numbers show not nearly as much as they should get)?
This is an honest question. Is it a “political” statement about copyright, or do you feel the service is just better. I’ve tried Grooveshark and paid for a year on a special and thought it was just absolutely horrible to use.
Re: Prediction
Why pay $9 for that instead of $10 for spotify
Can’t use Spotify without getting a Facebook profile (which I don’t want to do on principle). Can’t even pay for Spotify without a Facebook profile. Sure, I could create a fake one, but why bother?
Grooveshark isn’t perfect, but it suits my needs for a streaming service with offline mode for my phone (can’t hardly get a data signal from my desk at work). I can throw it on at home when I don’t feel like sorting through my own (large) stored library.
Re: Re: Prediction
RE: Facebook required for Spotify
No longer true since around Labor Day of this year.
Might as well try it out 🙂
Re: Re: Re: Prediction
News to me. Will give it a try. Thanks 🙂
Prediction
You are a good bot. You have missed the point, yet again. What Mike is saying is that the “rights holders should open their eyes and use this thing called the internet for the goodness it can bring to their bottom line.
Gee joe what’s the deal anyway. Oh I know; you are the ultimate grudge holder, the elephant of the internets. Mike called you out once for being a total douche-bag and you just can’t over the fact that he was right. Talk about not being able to take criticism. Live and learn and quit being a one trick pony.
Okay he’s been fed again, let’s try to get some real discussion going here. I know he gets all saucy every time someone replies to his totally inane comments that fail to grasp the actual intent of the article commented on in a lame attempt to dis Mikey the “pirate apologist.”
Prediction
Now that’s kinda what I’m talking about. Actual discussion instead of whooshing.
Prediction
except for the argument of you own making thing and the assumption that actual criticism of the article is unwelcome deal
“The biggest ‘pirates’ also tend to be the biggest buyers”. If you mean buyers of blank media, that’s certainly true. I buy and go through a lot of blank CDs and DVDs.
Re: Re:
“I buy and go through a lot of blank CDs and DVDs.”
Learn anything from them yet?
Re: Re: Re:
Am I supposed to?
Bull
As an indie publisher who was pirated into oblivion, this post is rationalizing criminal conduct. Forget the works which are stolen, there aer more works never published, ideas which will never be heard at all, and which would be changing lives and the world for the better if the authors were properly paid.
Look at the quality of today’s music versus the 1990s if you want to see what happens when people don’t get paid. They simply quit and move on to something that does pay.
I agree with the comment above, unfortunately, if people are not paid for their ideas, they leave or their quality is simply lost
Now there are many good file-sharing as https://www.jetdrop.net/, I am sure that the creators want to simply and safely deliver the desired information to the recipient.