3 ms·
"Pirates spend more money on music than non-pirates" Without taking a position on the accuracy of the claim I will say the study that determined that was deepl
by TomOfTTB 16y ago
"Pirates spend more money on music than non-pirates"
Without taking a position on the accuracy of the claim I will say the study that determined that was deeply flawed. Let me quote the first article that comes up on Google...
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.
This is flawed because people who are actively seeking music can reasonably be called "music enthusiasts" who would normally buy more music than their counterparts who don't actively seek out new music. Note the study says the ones who were categorized as "not pirates" didn't even use free sources to listen to new music.
So in order to get an accurate answer as to how piracy impacts sales you'd have to compare enthusiasts who pirate to those who don't.
- barrkel 16y agoEven that wouldn't be fully free of confounding variables, because you don't know if enthusiasts who pirate vs those who don't have the same quality of enthusiasm.
- chopsueyar 16y agoMy personal enthusiasm suffers from a lack of quality.
- amalcon 16y agoThis would still support the specific claim that "Pirates spend more money on music than non-pirates." It would not, however, support the claim that pirates spend more money on music than they would if piracy were not available as an option. As they say, correlation does not equal causation.
- baddox 16y agoGranted, there's no scientific evidence that they wouldn't spend more if piracy weren't an option, but from personal (anecdotal) evidence as well as common sense, I think it's likely the case. Being exposed to more music seems like it would lead to more music sales.
- chc 16y agoDeductive proof is not the goal of everything. There is not proof of causation, but it is the strongest inference. Without evidence to the contrary, it seems reasonable.
- amalcon 16y agoWithout evidence to the contrary, it also seems reasonable to relate declining movie ticket sales with increasing piracy. I think we all know what's wrong with doing that. The right way to run this sort of experiment would be to track how much music someone buys for a while, then give them a mildly inconvenient all-access pass to iTunes or something (a la Rhapsody) and see what changes.