A fascinating survey of music consumption conducted for British Music Rights has good and bad news for the beleaguered music business.The bad news: online file sharing is more prevalent than other surveys suggest. The good news: a lot of people are willing to pay for a service that offers legal, licensed P2P file sharing. Half the people surveyed think distributors such as large telecomms companies should pay creators from the proceeds of such a license. And a surprisingly large number of people still value physical music goods, with two thirds of potential subscribers to legal P2P saying that they would continue to buy CDs.
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Even further, iTunes proved that a lot of people don't know how to buy cheap mp3 without drm (legally). Mainly iPod zombies. In comparison with other services, itunes is not cheap.
That's a pretty negative outlook on it. iTunes proved that people are willing to pay for a download. End of story. It proves that there is a viable business model for selling music outside of CDs, and that people want to be able to listen to music on their computer and devices.
People who are dedicated pirates probably wouldn't even spend 10 cents on a song that was encoded in a lossless format and was DRM free - it's just how some people are. I understand that not everyone is like me, but I am an example of someone who knows how to use P2P software better than most and I now prefer to buy music through iTunes. I could have it such that for free I'd be able to obtain a CD image and rip it to any format that I wanted to, but instead I choose to buy songs for 99 cents each in lossy format. Why? For the convenience and for the fact that I like to support the artist, even in some form. I temper a lot of my buying because I do not want to fund the RIAA's lawsuits - for music that I absolutely want to have in a lossless format, or that I want the physical CD of, I will generally buy them in pawn shop-type environments (where it's often significantly cheaper; sometimes even cheaper than iTunes). The psychology that goes into this is a bit more complex than saying free (piracy) trumps all.
I might agree with you that the majority of iTunes buyers are clued out and wouldn't know how to get music for free otherwise, but not all of us who purchase through iTunes are doing so because we don't know any better. I don't buy music that often, but I pirate even less (to the point where I'm not pirating at all). Perhaps I just don't treat music as seriously as I once did...
That's a pretty negative outlook on it. iTunes proved that people are willing to pay for a download. End of story. It proves that there is a viable business model for selling music outside of CDs, and that people want to be able to listen to music on their computer and devices.
People who are dedicated pirates probably wouldn't even spend 10 cents on a song that was encoded in a lossless format and was DRM free - it's just how some people are. I understand that not everyone is like me, but I am an example of someone who knows how to use P2P software better than most and I now prefer to buy music through iTunes. I could have it such that for free I'd be able to obtain a CD image and rip it to any format that I wanted to, but instead I choose to buy songs for 99 cents each in lossy format. Why? For the convenience and for the fact that I like to support the artist, even in some form. I temper a lot of my buying because I do not want to fund the RIAA's lawsuits - for music that I absolutely want to have in a lossless format, or that I want the physical CD of, I will generally buy them in pawn shop-type environments (where it's often significantly cheaper; sometimes even cheaper than iTunes). The psychology that goes into this is a bit more complex than saying free (piracy) trumps all.
I might agree with you that the majority of iTunes buyers are clued out and wouldn't know how to get music for free otherwise, but not all of us who purchase through iTunes are doing so because we don't know any better. I don't buy music that often, but I pirate even less (to the point where I'm not pirating at all). Perhaps I just don't treat music as seriously as I once did...
If the same people who buy songs of iTunes knew how they could get the same songs for free of the p2ps in a DRM-free format that they can play on ANY MP3 player, guess what? They'd switch to the free option.
Neither of us can make a definite statement. However, as I stated above, I am one of the people who go against what you said. I can get music for free and I can get it in any DRM-free format of my choosing, with ID3 tags courtesy of CDDB, FreeDB (or whatever they call themselves these days), or my own labeling. Instead, I'm buying through iTunes and examining Amazon. While I do not think that I would represent the majority, I do not believe that I'm the only one in this position.
The reasons behind why I do what I do are important, of course. I don't expect them to match with everyone else, but it basically boils down to convenience. If you don't have a job and you have a fair bit of time, piracy seems rather worthwhile. When you're working, 99 cents or less for a song doesn't seem too bad. It's not lossless and occasionally there's DRM, but I can crack through the DRM without much trouble and I've never been an audiophile. I like FLAC, but when it comes down to it I can only rarely tell the difference. More importantly, it's just there. Not much searching involved, and no waiting. As I said before, I also like the idea of giving back to the creators, but that's a very minor reason to buy for me.
Does it sound that crazy? I think my situation is one that many people could find themselves in. Perhaps I just don't buy enough music to make piracy seem more worthwhile.
Anyway, the point of P2P is to help distribute files without costing the distributor a lot of bandwidth while at the same time maintaining good connection speeds - something bit torrent excels at and the open source community has really latched onto it.
Personally, I think the Music industry is tackling the whole thing the wrong way - it's a dying business model and they're grasping at straws to keep it. Nobody cared when other industries went out of business because a better replacement came along and unfortunately for them, that better replacement is free distribution, even on sites like myspace.
If they want to stick around longer, they need to rethink what exactly it is they're selling.
Legal advice.
I for one am not buying buying into this. The RIAA needs to be destroyed, plain and simple
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