Report Claims 95% of Music Downloads Are Illegal 331
Un pobre guey writes "The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) press release claims that 95% of music file downloads in 2008, an estimated 40 billion files, were illegal. Oddly enough, digital music sales are up: 'The digital music business internationally saw a sixth year of expansion in 2008, growing by an estimated 25 per cent to US$3.7 billion in trade value. Digital platforms now account for around 20 per cent of recorded music sales, up from 15 per cent in 2007. Recorded music is at the forefront of the online and mobile revolution, generating more revenue in percentage terms through digital platforms than the newspaper (4%), magazine (1%) and film industries (4%) combined... Despite these developments, the music sector is still overshadowed by the huge amount of unlicensed music distributed online. Collating separate studies in 16 countries over a three-year period, IFPI estimates over 40 billion files were illegally file-shared in 2008, giving a piracy rate of around 95 per cent.'"
Inflation... (Score:5, Insightful)
From the report:
Music companiesâ(TM) digital revenues internationally grew by an estimated 25 per cent in 2008
I can think of a long list of other industries that would love to have that kind of growth given the current economy.
Using an inflammatory and inflated claim that "95% of all downloads are pirated" is just showing how greedy the music industry is. But we all knew that already.
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FairSoftware.net [fairsoftware.net] -- where geeks are their own boss
Sales are up so who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
Advice to the RIAA: forget the piracy exists. You simply are not going to ever get money from those people - get over it. On the other hand, you're making more money than every from downloads and you should work to keep growing those figures. That's the only thing you can do, frankly. Fighting piracy is like punching marshmallows.
I call bullsh*t! (Score:5, Insightful)
How can they be sure 95% of them are illegal? Isn't this the same group that's for years been trying to track down who is downloading what and suing them? I mean, studies like this go to the honesty of the other person. And if people will lie about something as trivial as how many sexual partners they've had, what are the odds of people telling the truth here? Besides, if 95% of music downloads were illegal, that's a pretty strong argument that downloading music should be legalized, especially considering how pervasive it is and how ineffective enforcement has been to date.
There are three kinds of lies...
One thing this shows us... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Inflation... (Score:4, Insightful)
The sole fact that their digital revenues have gone up does not tell you much about the growth of the industry.
Re:Inflation... (Score:5, Insightful)
so did the artists themselves see at 25% increase as well, or are they being screwed on all sides now?
Re:I call bullsh*t! (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder what they consider a piracy download? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds pretty stupid to me.
Okay, now (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, how much of that music is not available from any "legal" source?
Re:I call bullsh*t! (Score:5, Insightful)
How can they be sure 95% of them are illegal?
This is what is going on here. The media companies decide, beforehand, how much money they should be making in a given period of time, based on voodoo bullshit as far as i can tell, then if they don't make that much money they bitch about the pirates and blame losses on them.
So while their digital revenue and legal downloads have probably gone up, the RIAA and the companies they represent think it should be going up MORE, a lot more apparently. The problem is they are fucking wrong, and have no credibility to say anything in public anymore.
8 years ago... (Score:5, Insightful)
100% of music downloads were illegal. Sounds like the RIAA is making progress
Does this inclue Canada? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I call bullsh*t! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Inflation... (Score:5, Insightful)
Their digital revenue may be up, but their overall sales are way down once again, because almost nobody buys CDs anymore, and that was their main gravy train.
Of course, who wants CDs when they could have something digital instead?
Re:I call bullsh*t! (Score:4, Insightful)
the problem is they then leap straight to this dream land where every download is a sale they missed out on. most of their shit isn't worth a download when it's free, let alone 15$.
Re:Inflation... (Score:5, Insightful)
Couple that with the economy right now and you could say that, since the rest of the economy has gone to shit, avoiding a decline was as good as they could have hoped for. In addition, you could say that since digital downloads make a la carte purchasing possible where physical sales require you to buy a whole cd, the popular songs are getting even more popular with digital downloads. I think that 4x the number of people downloading certain songs would be good overall for the music industry since concert sales are a big draw and everything else (generally) would remain even.
That doesn't take into account the cost to produce a cd or the comparitive profit margins between the two. I don't know what those comparisons are and I'm not even going to guess at them since the rest of my post is based on things that are true and relatively simple extrapolations from that point, but I will say that I personally believe that the shift from physical to digital media isn't hurting their business, although it is definitely changing it. Let's call it a horizontal shift with opportunities to capitalize on the change.
Re:Absolutely! (Score:1, Insightful)
Wow, what a dismal and petty future you paint for yourself. Incidentally most of us "Over 30 crowd" are the people that designed the technology you asshat whippersnappers use to illegally download stuff with.
you disgust me.
Re:I have an idea (Score:1, Insightful)
Pretty much (Score:4, Insightful)
Also if it really is that big and your sales are going up, well then what's the worry? Maybe it actually leads to MORE sales.
The problem is they project this image, and indeed have this mentality, that copyright infringement is theft. No it isn't. The reason a retailer hates theft is because not only does it decrease sales, but it takes away an item they had for sale. That hurts the bottom line. If someone steals a bag of chips, I can't sell those chips to anyone else. So if I'm a retailer, I want to do everything I can to stop that (and even then retailers accept that some shrinkage is going to happen regardless).
However if someone came in to my store, made a perfect copy of a bag of chips and then started handing out those copies for free. Well I'd be less miffed. Maybe I'm losing some sales now, but it isn't as though anything has been taken from me. Now suppose that when someone does that my sales don't go down, they in fact go up. People decide they want to come in and buy more chips, or other things I offer. Despite the free stuff being given away, I make more money. Well hell in this case I'd be happy. Let them hand out free stuff all day long if it makes me more money.
They just have this unrealistic greedy idea that if there was a magical system that could stop all copyright infringement, they'd get 20x the sales and thus 20x the profits. Ummm no. At best, you'd probably stay the same (the only empirical study of this ever done by Harvard and UNC found copying has no statistically significant effect on sales) at worst your sales would go down. They need to stop living in a fantasy world and be ahppy with what they've got.
Re:amazon number 1 - NiN (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:One thing this shows us... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Inflation... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually I've seen a report over at highdefforum.com which said, even though digital media has increased, sales of CDs have decreased, thereby giving the record companies a net loss in revenue ($1 songs aren't as profitable as $12 CDs).
Oh well.
Cry me a river. What we're basically seeing is a return to the 1950s and 1960s when singles routinely outsold albums. The record companies survived that time period just fine, and they can survive its rebirth.
Re:Best selling single (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Read between the lines (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)
The poster did not say that marketing is always constant at all times under all circumstances. The poster said that, comparing marketing for a song that is distributed digitally, or one that's distributed physically, the difference, if there even is one, is negligible. If an artist is popular with a certain demographic, you're most likely going to be marketing to that group in the same way, regardless of how it's distributed. The difference between having a brick and mortar store erect a cardboard stand to advertise a cd isn't all that different from the price to have a digital music store show an ad for the album on their homepage. So yes, the net impact of marketing is almost nothing in this comparison, as the marketing strategy would be unlikely to change one way or the other.
Please learn to actually read comments you're replying to before flaming them.
Re:Inflation... (Score:3, Insightful)
The record companies survived that time period just fine, and they can survive its rebirth.
I hope not. I want good music :(