26 ms·

Globally, Almost Four Out of Ten Music Consumers Are Pirates

202 points by okket 8y ago

npstr 8y ago
Six out of ten being legit is what surprises me here. That's pretty high.
- Freak_NL 8y ago
  That would be mostly due to the massive uptake of streaming music and mobile usage.
- fixermark 8y ago
  The legit channels have a level of convenience now not seen in the piracy channels, because money pays for proper curation and surfacing of content. I used Limewire back in the day. I couldn't tell you how many songs in my collection were artist credit "System of a Down." I think I had a System of a Down copy of the 1812 Overture in there somewhere. (It is also possible that legit channels are over-counted in the data because they're easier to explicitly audit. If the error factor estimate is the same for legit and bootleg channels, the data will reach the wrong conclusions).
- leetcrew 8y ago
  doesn't surprise me. most college students I've talked to recently (other than cs majors) genuinely have no idea how to pirate stuff (ie, don't even know what a torrent is). most are satisfied with the meagre selection on Spotify or even radio services like Pandora.
bambax 8y ago
The real "pirates" are the content editors who lobby for copyright extensions so that works of art never fall into the public domain. Public domain should be the rule and copyright the exception.
- cyborgx7 8y ago
  Very much agree. The only way I will ever take any discussion the legitimacy of copyright seriously is if the copyright period is reduced back to something sane like 20 years.
  - scotty79 8y ago
    I'd say in modern fast entertainment economy it should be more like 2 than 20.
    - cyborgx7 8y ago
      I agree. As distribution speed increases, it should have gone down instead of up. 20 years is an upper bound.
- enriquto 8y ago
  > Public domain should be the rule and copyright the exception. This is already the case for most of the music that many people are interested in (e.g., Bach, Vivaldi).
  - anc84 8y ago
    Except that those predate the era of music records. People are not interested in notes, they are interested in the music. Recordings of Bach and Vivaldi are still usually not in the public domain.
    - adrianN 8y ago
      Even the sheet music is still copyrighted, because you want modern notation, not photographs of the originals.
      - enriquto 8y ago
        > Even the sheet music is still copyrighted, because you want modern notation, not photographs of the originals. And you can very easily find them. Most moderately well-known compositions have been transcribed into pdf using modern typography (say, with lilypond) and uploaded to imslp and similar sites.
quantummkv 8y ago
I am not surprised, considering that pirating songs is still the most hassle free way to listen to music, especially down here in India. Spotify isn't available due to label issues and local streaming services don't have a good selection of non-bollywood music. Now that physical media cannot be used anywhere in laptops or mobiles and youtube cannot be minimized on mobiles, the best and easy way to get music, especially western music is to pirate mp3 files and share it on usb sticks and sd cards.
- Grumbledour 8y ago
  Just out of curiosity; Why is it not possible to buy mp3s? Amazon, play store, iTunes etc. all use no DRM to my knowledge? Or is it just a question of price?
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    It is, but not licensed for India. “Piracy” includes grey market media.
  - avar 8y ago
    (Not Indian, but we get the same thing in Europe) Because movie studios, music labels etc. sell exclusive distribution rights to local music cartels, and many of these deals are historical and hard to get out of, e.g. maybe they were 20-30 year contracts made in the mid-90s when nobody was serious about this "Internet" thing. Which is why Netflix has such a fragmented offering per-country, and why e.g. you might be able to technically buy some song on a CD in India, but it's not available anywhere online, or in the likes of Spotify.
    - unsignedint 8y ago
      I am frustrated by this all the time but for Japanese contents in US. Japanese broadcast (TV Japan) in the US can have segment censored or even cut entirely. (gets worse when Olympics is on, but that's another story with another reasons.) It got a lot better, particularly for anime, because companies were losing money without legal (and timely) distribution, but there's still big hole in music contents. I guess music from Japan is niche compared to anime. (And worse with something obscure I tend to listen, e.g. anime related music) Some small subset of musicians and labels are nice enough to put the entire thing on YouTube, but I wish there were an avenue to listen to them just as easy as Spotify, and with decent coverage.
tyingq 8y ago
Market fragmentation causes some of this. I pay for a couple of streaming services, but occasionally rip an mp3 from YouTube for things I can't find. If there was a "pay and download mp3" button on YouTube, I'd probably pay.
- tenebrisalietum 8y ago
  I would do that too.
- sp332 8y ago
  According to numbers in the article, a minimum of 24% of music consumers pay for streaming services and also pirate music.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
mellow-lake-day 8y ago
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say part of the problem is that streaming services are not available in all countries and if they are the price is not adjusted for the income level in that country. For instance Spotify is not available in many countries including Ukraine and India. The latter having a population of 1.3 billion people. GPM and Apple Music are better in that regard but nevertheless.
- _ooqq 8y ago
  As a "sane" person from a civilized country, I don't have an online payment account. I couldn't transmit my money to spotify even if I wanted to. That being said, I also like owning my music. As files. On my own devices. Running "fair trade" operating systems that let me do that.
  - cr1895 8y ago
    >I couldn't transmit my money to spotify even if I wanted to. You surely could. Go to a store and buy a Spotify gift card with cash.
  - jackpeterfletch 8y ago
    wat, like no credit/debit card of any kind?
    - bildung 8y ago
      Not very common in e.g. many parts of Europe.
      - Symbiote 8y ago
        Which European country doesn't have debit cards?
        bildung 8y ago
        Note I didn't claim debit cards don't exist here, just that they are not very common, especially for online payments. I personally live in Germany, in the middle of my live, with kids and a big household etc. and have never used a credit card, nor have I undergone a single situation where I needed one.
AllegedAlec 8y ago
Why are youtube to mp3 converters illegal? I mean, it's basically just recoding a signal; I don't see how that could be an illegal action. Might as well sue me for recoding WAV to mp3 so more music fits on my phone.
- teddyh 8y ago
  Copying, any copying, is breaking copyright, if a work is copyrighted. There are some defenses you have if actually accused of copyright infringement, like fair use, but those are exceptions after you’ve been accused. Is this absolutely crazy? Yes.
  - AllegedAlec 8y ago
    It's so ass-backwards. I mean, in the most technical sense, every ISP, routing point and whatnot upstream from me to youtube is breaking copyright by sending me the packets, since it is technically a copy of the work.
    - harshreality 8y ago
      It's ass-backwards (any law that makes 40% or more of the population a potential target of financially-disruptive lawsuits is not a reasonable law), but let's not get hung up on technical aspects of copying. It's obvious that ISP routing copies, and similar types of copying, involve transient copies that are quickly discarded and not consumed by anyone. The case law actually recognizes this difference. Legally, "copying" a work means meaningful copying, not merely copying data from one place in memory to another place in memory where it stays for a while until it's freed or garbage collected and then overwritten.
      - kaybe 8y ago
        Note that we are paying for this when buying equipment that can be used to copy!
  - _ph_ 8y ago
DJBunnies 8y ago
I feel like one third would have been a better ratio.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
rawoke083600 8y ago
How many out of a 100 ppl "ARE REGULAR" music consumers now vs 20 years ago ?
iamben 8y ago
...and yet music industry revenues are on the up again. If you can't get something legally - because you actually can't, or because you can't afford it, it's a 'victimless crime' and you desperately want it - you'll pirate it. But I think most people are happy to pay for the convenience of everything. £10 a month for Spotify is a no brainer for me. The problem happens when (label?) greed sinks in again and the streaming services fragment with 'exclusives' on each. At that point, people end up picking one to spend their cash on, and they'll pirate or stream a shitty version on YouTube the songs they can't get on their streaming service. You want to get more people to pay? Licence everything to everything - then the only people that will pirate are the ones that would never pay anyway. And I bet they're a smaller subset than four in ten.
- mrweasel 8y ago
  Fragmentation is what causing the rise in movie and tv piracy, if I was to guess. For years piracy have been declining in Denmark, this past year is the first time is started to rise again. The same year where Netflix as been losing a ton of content. Fragmentation is a huge problem, and I don’t understand it. Why do you care about managing your own streaming platform. Just licens everything at a price you believe to be fair and let the platforms fight to provide the best experience. As a music, TV or movie studio you’re the only one that sure to make money.
  - iamben 8y ago
    "Fragmentation is a huge problem, and I don’t understand it. Why do you care about managing your own streaming platform. Just licens everything at a price you believe to be fair and let the platforms fight to provide the best experience. As a music, TV or movie studio you’re the only one that sure to make money." This would be amazing. Imagine picking your streaming service based on who has the best app / recommendations / social baked in (or whatever you were looking for). But from a friend that works in TV sales - the platforms fight and pay for the exclusives. If it's going to everyone - pass. That money helps film the new stuff. I guess music has an advantage in the respect that it doesn't really work like that - and it's much cheaper to record an album. That's why it's so frustrating when music services fragment.
kevinherron 8y ago
I absolutely used to pirate all my music. Then Spotify came along. Pandora first, but I can't remember if I had completely stopped using mp3 at that point. I maybe had an iPod full of music I didn't pay for. Can't really remember the timelines here. Either way, just like with movie and TV, I'll happily pay for streaming if the selection is there.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- whiteboardr 8y ago
  > I'll happily pay for streaming if the selection is there. This. A million times.
- braythwayt 8y ago
  “Your typical architecture astronaut will take a fact like “Napster is a peer-to-peer service for downloading music” and ignore everything but the architecture, thinking it’s interesting because it’s peer to peer, completely missing the point that it’s interesting because you can type the name of a song and listen to it right away. ... “Talk about missing the point. If Napster wasn’t peer-to-peer but it did let you type the name of a song and then listen to it, it would have been just as popular.” —Joel Spolsky, “Don’t Let Architecture Astronauts Scare You,” 2001 https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/04/21/dont-let-architecture-astronauts-scare-you/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/04/21/dont-let-architect... ——— In the last 17 years, that quote keeps popping up because the companies that focus on letting you type the name of a song and listen to it right away have made money, while those that introduce friction to support some label’s business model? Not so much. But they keep complaining about “piracy.” 90% of piracy is eliminating friction. This past weekend, I bought the new Doctor Who on iTunes. I paid because Apple gave me a lot of ways to type the name of the show and watch it right away. Same reason I’ve spent thousands on music with them. It’s not about the price, it’s about the convenience.
  - adrianN 8y ago
    It is also about price though. I'd "rent" a lot more movies online if the price were the same as when I rented them on DVD, like fifty cents per day. However it costs like four Euros to stream a movie from Prime Video.
mgkimsal 8y ago
which one do i count in, if I participate legally (spotify, purchases, etc) but also pirate? am I counted in the 6 or the 4?
- fixermark 8y ago
  It's likely the answer is "yes," since there's no way to deduplicate your activity.
- sp332 8y ago
  You'll be in the 84% who pay for music subscriptions and in the 38% who pirate.
barking 8y ago
i'd be wary of anything the IFPI, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry present as fact. Similar organisations were until recently engaged in shakedowns of small businesses for even playing the radio. Even after this was ruled illegal in Europe we used to still get a letter every year demanding we pay up for the benefits music was bringing our business.
peterburkimsher 8y ago
Right now I'm spending a week at Taizé, a retreat centre in France. There's access to Internet only from 9:30 am - 8 pm, for 15 minutes at a time, then a forced 10 minute break (unless I change MAC address). I don't have a bank account here, so I can't pay for a 2 year subscription for 4G. I also don't have a job. I'm grateful for my offline music collection keeping me alive right now. Music is especially important when times are tough, and it's in those difficult times that money and subscription-level stability are hard to find.
- Rjevski 8y ago
  Prepaid SIM card?
k__ 8y ago
I simply don't listen to music as much as I used to. Today a Youtube playlist is often enough for me.
mnm1 8y ago
Streaming services are nice, but I haven't yet found one that contains the complete discography that is available through torrents and other means. What's worse, what's available changes often so songs that are available now may not be available next week. In other words, streaming services provide a service, but they are far from replacing other means. If a service popped up that provided streaming of all the music I wanted to listen to 100% of the time, then it might be worth paying for. Another use case is mixing songs which usually requires local copies. Basically, all streaming services are deficient in some way so it shouldn't be any surprise that piracy continues.
TomMarius 8y ago
Yeah - I can't easily buy losless recordings that I'd get as files that could reside on my NAS, so tough luck. Streaming services offer less than a third of what I listen to, and their UX is idiotic. I cancelled my Spotify after I found out that my downloaded songs are deleted from my phone for the fourth time for some unknown reason, that really pisses you off on a 10-hour road trip.
boomboomsubban 8y ago
>Stream-ripping users are more likely to say that they rip music so they have music to listen to offline. This means they can avoid paying for a premium streaming subscription, This doesn't make sense. A premium subscription service doesn't give you access offline, and usually won't help with cellular data caps.
- alexedw 8y ago
  Both Spotify[1] and Apple Music[2] offer offline downloads to premium users. [1] https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/the_basics/listen-offline/ https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/the_basics/list... [2] https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT204839 https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT204839
  - AstralStorm 8y ago
    Which you cannot move to another device and need their broken media player to play. Thanks but no thanks. Have a real DRM-free shop instead please. Without idiotic user unfriendly lawyer requiring license to use.
    - thecatspaw 8y ago
      spotify also opens up the API for third party media players if you have a premium account
    - Mindwipe 8y ago
      Customers have pretty overwhelmingly decided they don't want that, as a whole.
      - Krasnol 8y ago
        Did they? Or did they just bend down to what's out there?
  - andrewla 8y ago
    As does Google Play Music [1]. Amazon Music Unlimited does as well, but only allows to supported devices [2]. [1] https://support.google.com/googleplaymusic/answer/1250232?hl=en https://support.google.com/googleplaymusic/answer/1250232?hl... [2] https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201377740 https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...
isthatart 8y ago
From the pdf at the end of the article, this estimate is based on a study of 19000 consumers from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, UK, US. The population of all these countries is 1.5 billion, but there are more than 3 billion internet users. Also, a study based on 0.000001 of the 1.5 billion population?
thx4allthestuff 8y ago
There are two things in this world that I have no problem with anyone in need stealing - food and music. I will politely look away. When I was a kid I pirated music, as well as music production software. I grew up pretty poor and I wouldn't have had those things otherwise (the only reason we had a computer was because of oil dividends given to all Alaskan residents once per year). I don't feel like anyone really lost out because of me downloading those things when I was young. But I know that the music industry eventually gained a lifetime subscriber (currently Apple Music, for many years now - family plan), and don't even get me started on the money I drop on software synthesizers. The good fortune that drizzled on me as a kid came back to those people as a raging storm. Advertisers know exactly what they need to show me when they want more of my money (those sweet, shiny synths), and I'm not even mad at them. They're almost like books now, where I don't even need to use them, I just like having them and knowing they're mine. That being said, as a long time amateur electronic musician, I'd love for people to pirate my music. As it stands I can't seem to even pay them to take it (with music that is).
- kgwxd 8y ago
  Stealing is the wrong word for digital music. Copying. It's just copying. And, in most cases, it's at an immeasurable cost to anyone. To use the terms "pirating" and "stealing" not only make it seem much worse than it actually is, it waters down the mental image of legitimate use of those words, making the actual acts seem less serious. "Copycats" would be a fairer term.
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    Money is imaginary too - taking a piece of paper isn't really stealing? This whole pedantic argument has been used to rationalize stiffing artists for their work for decades, and its tiresome.
    - kgwxd 8y ago
      Copying a piece of paper isn't stealing. Edit: Actually, now that I think about it, you might have to steal it to make the copy. Your analogy is useless for this argument. Money might be an abstract concept but bills and coins aren't imaginary. Try an analogy with digital currency then maybe there be something to talk about, but I'm guessing anything you can come up with will actually be talking about "hacking" or "fraud", not "stealing".
kgwxd 8y ago
Correlation does not imply causation. It seems unlikely the music itself is driving people to hijack ships, kidnap, rape and murder on such a large scale. Maybe there's something in the water.
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  Are you thinking that "pirate" is a dysphemism dreamed up by industry propagandists? The first software pirates named themselves that. The industry would rather call them "thieves" or "criminals," something with less of a quaint, romantic feel in the modern day.
  - kgwxd 8y ago
    Just a joke based on Stallman comments[1]. If that's the case, then it seems the founding fathers did everyone a disservice. Everyone would be laughing at the MPAA and RIAA if they were constantly campaigning against "copycats", maybe even Capitol Hill. It's not too late to change the term if we all join in. [1]https://stallman.org/articles/end-war-on-sharing.html https://stallman.org/articles/end-war-on-sharing.html
    - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
      They wouldn't be calling them "copycats." They'd be calling them "thieves." Even more so than they already do, I mean. "Pirate" is better. A pirate is a romantic antihero in the public eye; a thief is just a greedy thug.
wtmt 8y ago
Somehow I don't like the "rental model" for songs and books that one may enjoy multiple times in one's life (compared to movies that are usually more ephemeral, and there may not be many that one would want to watch multiple times). So "owning" — the rights to copy and play the music anywhere, anytime and on any device — seems like a better choice than supporting streaming services where you can't really say if you'd be able to listen to your favorite song tomorrow.
- ghaff 8y ago
  I feel similar for music I actually care about. That said, I'm coming from a place where I already had a large collection of music ripped from CDs I bought (plus from the early days of Napster mostly to replace music I had on vinyl). And TBH I mostly don't care that much about new music. I still buy some music even though I subscribe to Apple Music. But if I were coming from a place where I was starting out and owned no music, I might think differently.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Yup. Getting a Spotify account and then Netflix account made me forget the desire to pirate. Fast forward a couple years, my favourite songs and movies disappearing from those services made me seriously reconsider the value proposition, compared to visiting a well known Bay of buccaneers.
Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
Personally, I pirate unless I can buy the music directly from the artist and download it in a lossless, DRM free format, using only open source software (or websites like Bandcamp). Maybe about 10% of my collection is paid for.
- mabedan 8y ago
  what does the open source thing has to do with artists being able to earn a living or not?
  - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
    It's about establishing a mutually respectful relationship between the artist and consumer.
    - jmull 8y ago
      I think you unconditionally dictating all the terms is not respectful of the artist.
      - ddevault 8y ago
        These are simple terms that serve to preserve the music. It serves the interests of a third party, not the musician or consumer, if these terms are not met.
        jmull 8y ago
        I think you should talk to the artists before pirating their music and see what they think. Just deciding for yourself when it's OK has nothing to do with respect.
        Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
        I think you and I just see it differently.
leothekim 8y ago
I don't see any stats showing a trend over time. This YouGov report indicates piracy is actually dropping in one country over the past 5 years (from 18% of Britons to 10% of Britons). https://yougov.co.uk/news/2018/08/02/number-britons-illegally-downloading-music-falls/ https://yougov.co.uk/news/2018/08/02/number-britons-illegall...
ada1981 8y ago
I think we can at least reduce that number down to 2 out of 5 without much cost or intervention.
- tshannon 8y ago
  I disagree. Without diligence, that number could skyrocket as high as 8 out of 20. Where would we be then?
  - ada1981 8y ago
    I hadn’t considered this as deeply as I should have. I actually recall something out of the Regan Administration where a similar scenario actually ended up with numbers of 20 out of 50 - however that was largely speculative and not officially confirmed.
jhabdas 8y ago
Copyright is a scam from a previous world. Go get it bois: NewPipe (A free lightweight YouTube frontend for Android.) - https://f-droid.org/app/org.schabi.newpipe https://f-droid.org/app/org.schabi.newpipe
fixermark 8y ago
That's way down from when 10/10 music consumers were pirates, just trading songs with each other around campfires and town squares without deep thought paid to credit. Seriously, exclusive rights to music creation and reproduction are a pretty new thing; I think humanity will survive this "recent" trend.
- jMyles 8y ago
  You're sentiment is more charitable than mine. If anybody ever tries to control some other person's activity in this way, and it happens to be my music that's at issue, that will certainly not be an appropriate position to take vis a vis my creation. (Not that my music is really worth anything to anyone, except maybe my song at DjangoCon 2012 :-) ). I just don't understand how these ideas have even become so pervasive. The idea that I can own a song (or any data) to the exclusion of preventing someone from copying bytes from one drive to another... it's just so strange.
  - mordae 8y ago
    People don't really care and just repeat the narrative. "Musician has to eat, too, right?" Most conservative people around me don't really care about IP right. Heck, they don't even understand them at all! I've seen them repeatedly pirating images from Google or copying their music using ripping tools while still advocating for copyright.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      Also patents. People are all for patents because they believe that one day they'll have a brilliant idea and make money this way. Well, patents are[0] how you deprive society of being able to use that idea when the time is ripe for it to be used. -- [0] - with the possible exception of pharmaceuticals.
      - Ajedi32 8y ago
        Why are pharmaceuticals an exception? What makes them different?
Ace17 8y ago
Could we please stop using the loaded term "pirate"? Attacking ships and killing people is way worse than "stealing" anyway!
- consp 8y ago
  The term is in my eyes not used to describe the act of violence in this sense but most likely for living out side of the law and ignoring most authorities.
  - kwhitefoot 8y ago
    Well then it is even more inappropriate because most music 'pirates' are pretty much indistinguishable from the general population and certainly do not live outside the law or ignore most authorities.
    - xaqfox 8y ago
      Do you expect to listen to sea-shanties on pirate radio?
      - cocacola1 8y ago
        I certainly do. After playing Black Flag, sea shanties started to grow on me.
- logfromblammo 8y ago
  Words in English change their meaning based on usage in popular culture. Ever since the last of the "real" pirates was hanged, the pirate has become a fictional archetype from the Age of Sail. The pirate is now a form of self-governing rebel against authority, an era-appropriate gangster with a heart ranging from black as coal to something far short of a heart of gold--gilded brass, at best. They make great anti-heroes. They cheat, but the game was already rigged. Contrast with navies and marine corps that also attack ships and kill people, but do so under the aegis of state-sanctioned legitimacy. And they have a strict, authoritarian command hierarchy, rather than the freewheeling pirate charters that only invested absolute authority in the captain during the heat of combat. It certainly doesn't help that the libertarian crowd with fantasies of living statelessly (unflagged vessels) in international waters (seasteading) would be considered by the law of the sea to be legally indistinguishable from pirates. Your pleas are therefore likely to go unheeded, because "pirate" is indeed a loaded term, but it isn't loaded with a powder charge and 9-inch iron ball, not by a long shot. Pirates are now the proto-punks, the anti-authoritarian rebels of the sea. They are the ultimate self-interested libertarians, looting those who are plundering the new world colonies and shipping the silver back home to the king. As media distributors have colonized the new world of artists that work in recordings that can be duplicated endlessly with little effort, the new pirates rebel against their copyrights and plunder the ships filled with gold, bound for Wall Street and City of London. The metaphor is just too apt.
AdmiralAsshat 8y ago
I like owning my media. The idea that I can pay Amazon/Apple/Google for a piece of media and they can subsequently yank it out of my library down the line because they lost their license to distribute it does not sit well with me. I imagine it doesn't sit well with alot of people, either. Until the dominant form of distribution allows people to OWN their music, I believe that piracy will persist.
- tordanik 8y ago
  I share the desire to permanently own media. Amazon have been selling music as DRM-free mp3 files since 2008, though, so that option is already available from a legal, mainstream online shop.
  - AdmiralAsshat 8y ago
    I'm glad that Amazon sells DRM-free MP3s (although I imagine they only did it to remain competitive with iTunes). They don't do it with their eBooks, however. Any time I buy an ebook through them, the first thing I do is download it to my PC and strip the DRM via Calibre so that I have a DRM-free version should Amazon ever decide to yank the original again.
- lev99 8y ago
  Why do you feel a strong desire for ownership? I enjoy going to art museums and experiencing visual art, but I never experienced the inclination to purchase any of it. Music to me is a lot like that.
  - HeadsUpHigh 8y ago
    It's the difference between data and a physical item. I don't expect to own every physical item I view but I do expect limitless access to my data, especially if I've paid for it.
    - lev99 8y ago
      I don't draw such a strong lines between physical and virtual items. Even in the case where you buy a song, you don't have limitless rights to it. It would be illegal, for example, to buy a CD and use a song from that CD in a television commercial. You don't own the song, you are purchasing the right to replay the song in some situations. DRM purchases and streaming services are remarkably similar deals.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
petecooper 8y ago
I'm another non-streamer and I get most of my music from Bandcamp. The appeal to me is a lot of smaller labels and artists are on a more level playing field, I know more money goes to the artists, and the merch selection is great. I'm of an era that I remember CD albums would cost 15-20GBP sometimes, and I'm still very album-oriented in my listening. My 'thing' these days is buying digital copies of releases I like, and buying a vinyl copy of releases I really like, so I have a memento. The shipping costs can be steep, especially trans-Atlantic, but the tangible collection of records in a flight case is the closest thing to a safe of valuables that I own. Buy the vinyl, and typically there's an included copy of the digital version (either a code in the sleeve or a gratis copy in Bandcamp's case), so I can then download the FLAC and make whatever format I want from there. Total price typically ends up being more expensive than one of those 15-20GBP CDs from a bygone era, but I've got a digital copy I can play over and over, and a physical copy as a keepsake. I've found a lot of new music from Bandcamp. Their articles are high quality, and have directed me toward all kinds of music I wouldn't usually listen to. (Disclaimer: active customer of Bandcamp, not connected in any financial or professional sense, no other affiliation…though I do think about applying to work with them from time to time.) Edit: I use the same username here as I do on Bandcamp if anyone wants to snoop on my collection and/or wantlist, or be internet friends etc.
- brusch64 8y ago
  Bandcamp is my preferred way of buying music these days. The only advantage of physival media is the record cover. But I am really pissed if I can't download the album or if I am just able to download a shitty MP3 of the music I've bought. So Bandcamp works great for me. It offers all the options I want (FLAC) and I like that a band can set the price to 0$ so you can download it from Bandcamp for free but you can give them money if you want to. Awesome experience all around. And with the music I like most of the bands are on Bandcamp.
  - eertami 8y ago
    What do you find so shitty about MP3, are you morally opposed to it's origin/licensing? Quality wise for listening you aren't going to tell the difference between a -v0 MP3 and FLAC even if you think otherwise. For anyone that wants to claim otherwise, unless you've had someone setup an A/B test with a significant amount of cases you're falling victim to placebo. I say this as a professional audio engineer, who long ago would always seek out FLAC. Now, unless I need to edit or re-encode a file the MP3 is just as good, far from shitty.
zimablue 8y ago
This argument about "violation of rights" which assumes some absolutist intellectual property right, I realised you don't even have to engage in it. If I could push a button and transfer a million pounds from Ed Sheeran's account to mine, I'd do it without hesitation. Even if you accept the argument that I really should pay him $10 per album he should count himself lucky that society has constrained my theft to those limits.
WalkTalk 8y ago
Thank you for sharing. I'd say the virtual product market needs to adjust, it's not a new idea, but whatever laws are applied (and piracy laws are strict in my country) only a few pirates end up fined and the torrent pages just move their servers offshore. I'm sad to see those few poor souls getting caught because really, it looks like everybody is doing that.
40acres 8y ago
I used to pirate music, tv and movies a lot. Every hit show, every interesting album. For me the downsides were tied to the hassle of finding good quality streams, there wasn't much friction but there was enough that when streaming came along and I had the disposable income to afford it I went all in. Streaming will probably never be 90%+ of consumption but as long as it's a frictionless experience that is portable it will serve many.
Illniyar 8y ago
Analyzing data for illegal downloads has notoriously being very hard to do. Where are they getting those numbers?
rdl 8y ago
I find it impossible to pay any RIAA affiliated artist or label for music after the battles we had in the late 90s/early 00s. I pirate some music, but basically listen to audiobooks (which I happily pay for; I probably spend $1k/yr on Audible) instead of music 95% of the time. I basically view it as supporting terrorism, even though all of the individual execs from back then are gone by now.
bobbymcbobbob 8y ago
I can imagine the music industry response as I type... "Arrrr(gh)!"
rchaud 8y ago
It's important for me to have a permanent digital copy of the music I pay for. The modern streaming services' subscription model doesn't allow for that. Worse still, rather than being a dumb pipe, which is literally what cyber lockers were, they now have to be a taste-making platform, a modern MTV trying to shape our preferences and stuffing ads anywhere they can. I find the music I want by reading community based sources like Last.fm, RateYourMusic, genre-specialist website, reviews on personal blogs, and magazines/web publications I trust (e.g. the Quietus). Thankfully sites like Bandcamp is still around, and offer a decent way to discover new artists and get DRM-free downloads, no questions asked.
cailloud 8y ago
I for one, love to get drunk on rum and pillage coastvillages Arrrr gimme them shiny discs ye landscruffy or we will keelhaul ye arrrr In all seriousness, i like to own my music and i love bandcamp. I'm pretty poor so yeah a large part of my collection is stolen from the shores of india. But just like books, when i have some extra money i will buy from artists who i love listening too. If i was rich i would buy everything, but i am not and i still want to listen too music.
hinkley 8y ago
I wonder how small Lars’ pool is now. (Man, can I hold a grudge for a long time)
jcoffland 8y ago
Conflating piracy with copying music is fragrantly disingenuous. Pirating is the theft of someone else's goods by force. Music "piracy" is the circumvention of artificial scarcity to duplicate information and it leaves the original property intact. It was a clever con getting us to use the same word.
- EpicEng 8y ago
  Meaning changes over time. Most of us have accepted a new, alternate definition of "piracy" in regards to digital media. Whether or not you (or I, because I don't either) like it is irrelevant.
  - jcoffland 8y ago
    I'm for making language mean what we want it to mean and I oppose the use of the word piracy to mean copying. Is that not how language changes?
    - EpicEng 8y ago
      Well, yes, but a word means whatever the majority believes it to mean. You're in the minority, so... I get that it's a tactic used by the business end of things, but it's where we're at now.
dijit 8y ago
Anecdatum: I was a big music buyer because iTunes made it quite easy. I like to “own” my music, so it was appealing- DRM free, album art and metadata formatted correctly. But then they nerfed the ever loving shit out of the music app on my phone and force fed me Apple Music. Since I ideologically disagree with that model I went back to the old ways of CDs and luckily I have Plex which handles my music on my phone now. It’s not as nice as before but it’s better than being forced into a subscription.
throwawayse1 8y ago
As an eastern european I've gotten so used to pirating everything in my childhood that even now (25 yo) I pirate ALL of my: books, movies, music, games.
anon49124 8y ago
Then music is priced too high. (And musicians don't get a big enough cut either.)
notmyaccount 8y ago
Not surprising. I was one of the pirates before streaming services came about. Now I am not. Or maybe it was because I was younger and had a finite amount of pocket money to spend on an infinite amount of desires. But streaming has definitely made it lots easier to access music.
trey-jones 8y ago
I certainly did it in college and after (when I didn't have any money? sorry, I guess). Streaming services are all I need now. I don't need to own it, just listen to it.
gehsty 8y ago
I’d say more like 2 out of 5
gwbas1c 8y ago
I still pirate music... When it's not available in a streaming service, and not available legally for a fair price! I think the best way to address piracy is with strong copyright reform. Specifically, once content is sold for mass consumption, it needs to make its way into streaming services. Things like artificial scarcity need to be phased out.
upbeatlinux 8y ago
Why does four out of ten sound better than two out of five?
screye 8y ago
I am of a strong opinion that piracy is about access rather than stealing. Piracy for the most part is used by 2 types of people : 1. Those who would never have bought the product because of lack of income to do so. 2. Those who find the product to hard to access. Steam is an excellent example of dealing with both. Steam sales and location specific prices solve problem 1. Everything one platform everywhere in the world solves 2.
- saganus 8y ago
  Just thinking out loud here, but, how long until Steam starts offering a Music service? Maybe not for big labels/artists, but if they did something like Greenlight for indie bands... I could see it working... Maybe. Or am I way off here?
  - spencerflem 8y ago
    They have a player, and sell soundtracks. It's not very good right now though.
  - jarcane 8y ago
    I'd just as soon use Bandcamp honestly. Steam's attempts at media sales have been awful. Videos are broken and often won't play, music is usually just a handful of MP3s buried deep in the Steam folders.
    - saganus 8y ago
      Good point. It never even occurred to me that they would sell music so no wonder they are bad a it, at least for now.
- jarcane 8y ago
  Thanks to Steam I haven't bothered to pirate a PC game in nearly a decade. Thanks to Google Play, Spotify, and Bandcamp, the same can be said for music. Only TV and film really holds out. I just can't get my favorite shows in any sensible fashion, and so much just isn't even available to me. Netflix where I live at times feels like a waste of money save for a few favorite originals. TV especially is just awful, a lot of my favorite shows simply can't be had for any price, because of arbitrary exclusivity deals, time delays, bad organization, and region locking nonsense. Even if I cared for any of the local content here in my country, it's all spread out over multiple streaming sites, and quite a lot isn't available or has random availability.
INTPenis 8y ago
I believe a large part of these pirates are in the increasingly connected world outside of Europe and North America. I consider myself a pirate, without shame. My first games on C64 were pirated and since then I've been involved in piratbyrån and the swedish pirate party. But I make enough money now to use Google Play Music and rarely pirate music these days. Mostly movies, shows and audiobooks. So since this article specifically mentions music I make the assumption that it's not talking about my world. A vast majority of people around me use streaming services for music today. But I have friends in Thailand and Vietnam and there it's quite common to see pirated movies playing on long bus rides with VIP bus lines for example. I also have friends on Croatia and Bosnia and there it's also still very common to go to a neighborhood pirate who will provide you with CDs of your favorite artists. So I would be much less surprised if they were still pirating music in these places rather than using streaming services. So there's a big world out there with an ever growing connected population, Africa, Asia, South America, and I'd speculate that they're driving up those numbers.
clubm8 8y ago
Are the other 6 just not consumers (100% piracy)? :)
readhn 8y ago
That is actually lower than i expected - since globally only some people are able to afford music services like spotify, apple music etc.
ravenstine 8y ago
4 out of 10? More like 9.9 out of 10 if you count playing unauthorized albums on YouTube, which I've seen everyone do at least once.
Aeolun 8y ago
Of course, music companies see this as a problem instead of an opportunity. More pawsuits it is!
8bitsrule 8y ago
Back in the day, I used to listen to top-40 radio all day long. I bought some of the tunes I liked. The radio stations paid DJs to sift through incoming tunes and air the good stuff. Yeah, I got spoiled into thinking that you got to listen to stuff before you forked out for some of it. I liked that model a lot better than paying for a streaming service. My guess is that's still a fine model for most people.
- seizethecheese 8y ago
  This strikes me as unwarranted nostalgia. With Spotify, you can find a universe of playlist curated by all the people with the best taste in the world. I find this far more compelling than being stuck with a handful of gatekeepers for my city in the genres that I like.
  - 8bitsrule 8y ago
    Nostalgic for good music? yep, that's me. Good DJ's prove their qualifications with every record they spin. I don't need an ISP and a subscription. The genre I like is music written by talented composers and performed by talented musicians. What's the name of that playlist?
jokoon 8y ago
Louis ck used a good solution. You just paid and downloaded the thing directly. The problem is the intermediary. People don't want to give money to labels. It's a little like buying food to your local producer. I guess even Bandcamp makes money. Consumers would rather pirate than see a fraction of their money land on some accountant desk for copyright management. Content is easily copiable, and did someone to live on their content doesn't require a high price. In the digital age i don't see how an album could cost more than $5, or even $1 or $2 if you're not a full time artist. Louie CK made millions that way, I agree that he was already popular though. Just let people set their price (Radiohead did that), and advertise that method on a clean torrent, I'm sure people would pay.
stuaxo 8y ago
This seems very low, in the days of tapes it would have been nearly 100%.

202 points by okket 8y ago

npstr 8y ago

Six out of ten being legit is what surprises me here. That's pretty high.

Freak_NL 8y ago
That would be mostly due to the massive uptake of streaming music and mobile usage.
fixermark 8y ago
The legit channels have a level of convenience now not seen in the piracy channels, because money pays for proper curation and surfacing of content. I used Limewire back in the day. I couldn't tell you how many songs in my collection were artist credit "System of a Down." I think I had a System of a Down copy of the 1812 Overture in there somewhere. (It is also possible that legit channels are over-counted in the data because they're easier to explicitly audit. If the error factor estimate is the same for legit and bootleg channels, the data will reach the wrong conclusions).
leetcrew 8y ago
doesn't surprise me. most college students I've talked to recently (other than cs majors) genuinely have no idea how to pirate stuff (ie, don't even know what a torrent is). most are satisfied with the meagre selection on Spotify or even radio services like Pandora.

bambax 8y ago

The real "pirates" are the content editors who lobby for copyright extensions so that works of art never fall into the public domain. Public domain should be the rule and copyright the exception.

cyborgx7 8y ago
Very much agree. The only way I will ever take any discussion the legitimacy of copyright seriously is if the copyright period is reduced back to something sane like 20 years.
- scotty79 8y ago
  I'd say in modern fast entertainment economy it should be more like 2 than 20.
  - cyborgx7 8y ago
    I agree. As distribution speed increases, it should have gone down instead of up. 20 years is an upper bound.
enriquto 8y ago
> Public domain should be the rule and copyright the exception. This is already the case for most of the music that many people are interested in (e.g., Bach, Vivaldi).
- anc84 8y ago
  Except that those predate the era of music records. People are not interested in notes, they are interested in the music. Recordings of Bach and Vivaldi are still usually not in the public domain.
  - adrianN 8y ago
    Even the sheet music is still copyrighted, because you want modern notation, not photographs of the originals.
    - enriquto 8y ago
      > Even the sheet music is still copyrighted, because you want modern notation, not photographs of the originals. And you can very easily find them. Most moderately well-known compositions have been transcribed into pdf using modern typography (say, with lilypond) and uploaded to imslp and similar sites.

quantummkv 8y ago

I am not surprised, considering that pirating songs is still the most hassle free way to listen to music, especially down here in India. Spotify isn't available due to label issues and local streaming services don't have a good selection of non-bollywood music. Now that physical media cannot be used anywhere in laptops or mobiles and youtube cannot be minimized on mobiles, the best and easy way to get music, especially western music is to pirate mp3 files and share it on usb sticks and sd cards.

Grumbledour 8y ago
Just out of curiosity; Why is it not possible to buy mp3s? Amazon, play store, iTunes etc. all use no DRM to my knowledge? Or is it just a question of price?
- Spooky23 8y ago
  It is, but not licensed for India. “Piracy” includes grey market media.
- avar 8y ago
  (Not Indian, but we get the same thing in Europe) Because movie studios, music labels etc. sell exclusive distribution rights to local music cartels, and many of these deals are historical and hard to get out of, e.g. maybe they were 20-30 year contracts made in the mid-90s when nobody was serious about this "Internet" thing. Which is why Netflix has such a fragmented offering per-country, and why e.g. you might be able to technically buy some song on a CD in India, but it's not available anywhere online, or in the likes of Spotify.
  - unsignedint 8y ago
    I am frustrated by this all the time but for Japanese contents in US. Japanese broadcast (TV Japan) in the US can have segment censored or even cut entirely. (gets worse when Olympics is on, but that's another story with another reasons.) It got a lot better, particularly for anime, because companies were losing money without legal (and timely) distribution, but there's still big hole in music contents. I guess music from Japan is niche compared to anime. (And worse with something obscure I tend to listen, e.g. anime related music) Some small subset of musicians and labels are nice enough to put the entire thing on YouTube, but I wish there were an avenue to listen to them just as easy as Spotify, and with decent coverage.

tyingq 8y ago

Market fragmentation causes some of this. I pay for a couple of streaming services, but occasionally rip an mp3 from YouTube for things I can't find. If there was a "pay and download mp3" button on YouTube, I'd probably pay.

tenebrisalietum 8y ago
I would do that too.
sp332 8y ago
According to numbers in the article, a minimum of 24% of music consumers pay for streaming services and also pirate music.
deleted 8y ago
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mellow-lake-day 8y ago

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say part of the problem is that streaming services are not available in all countries and if they are the price is not adjusted for the income level in that country. For instance Spotify is not available in many countries including Ukraine and India. The latter having a population of 1.3 billion people. GPM and Apple Music are better in that regard but nevertheless.

_ooqq 8y ago
As a "sane" person from a civilized country, I don't have an online payment account. I couldn't transmit my money to spotify even if I wanted to. That being said, I also like owning my music. As files. On my own devices. Running "fair trade" operating systems that let me do that.
- cr1895 8y ago
  >I couldn't transmit my money to spotify even if I wanted to. You surely could. Go to a store and buy a Spotify gift card with cash.
- jackpeterfletch 8y ago
  wat, like no credit/debit card of any kind?
  - bildung 8y ago
    Not very common in e.g. many parts of Europe.
    - Symbiote 8y ago
      Which European country doesn't have debit cards?
      - bildung 8y ago
        Note I didn't claim debit cards don't exist here, just that they are not very common, especially for online payments. I personally live in Germany, in the middle of my live, with kids and a big household etc. and have never used a credit card, nor have I undergone a single situation where I needed one.

AllegedAlec 8y ago

Why are youtube to mp3 converters illegal? I mean, it's basically just recoding a signal; I don't see how that could be an illegal action. Might as well sue me for recoding WAV to mp3 so more music fits on my phone.

teddyh 8y ago
Copying, any copying, is breaking copyright, if a work is copyrighted. There are some defenses you have if actually accused of copyright infringement, like fair use, but those are exceptions after you’ve been accused. Is this absolutely crazy? Yes.
- AllegedAlec 8y ago
  It's so ass-backwards. I mean, in the most technical sense, every ISP, routing point and whatnot upstream from me to youtube is breaking copyright by sending me the packets, since it is technically a copy of the work.
  - harshreality 8y ago
    It's ass-backwards (any law that makes 40% or more of the population a potential target of financially-disruptive lawsuits is not a reasonable law), but let's not get hung up on technical aspects of copying. It's obvious that ISP routing copies, and similar types of copying, involve transient copies that are quickly discarded and not consumed by anyone. The case law actually recognizes this difference. Legally, "copying" a work means meaningful copying, not merely copying data from one place in memory to another place in memory where it stays for a while until it's freed or garbage collected and then overwritten.
    - kaybe 8y ago
      Note that we are paying for this when buying equipment that can be used to copy!
- _ph_ 8y ago

DJBunnies 8y ago

I feel like one third would have been a better ratio.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

rawoke083600 8y ago

How many out of a 100 ppl "ARE REGULAR" music consumers now vs 20 years ago ?

iamben 8y ago

...and yet music industry revenues are on the up again. If you can't get something legally - because you actually can't, or because you can't afford it, it's a 'victimless crime' and you desperately want it - you'll pirate it. But I think most people are happy to pay for the convenience of everything. £10 a month for Spotify is a no brainer for me. The problem happens when (label?) greed sinks in again and the streaming services fragment with 'exclusives' on each. At that point, people end up picking one to spend their cash on, and they'll pirate or stream a shitty version on YouTube the songs they can't get on their streaming service. You want to get more people to pay? Licence everything to everything - then the only people that will pirate are the ones that would never pay anyway. And I bet they're a smaller subset than four in ten.

mrweasel 8y ago
Fragmentation is what causing the rise in movie and tv piracy, if I was to guess. For years piracy have been declining in Denmark, this past year is the first time is started to rise again. The same year where Netflix as been losing a ton of content. Fragmentation is a huge problem, and I don’t understand it. Why do you care about managing your own streaming platform. Just licens everything at a price you believe to be fair and let the platforms fight to provide the best experience. As a music, TV or movie studio you’re the only one that sure to make money.
- iamben 8y ago
  "Fragmentation is a huge problem, and I don’t understand it. Why do you care about managing your own streaming platform. Just licens everything at a price you believe to be fair and let the platforms fight to provide the best experience. As a music, TV or movie studio you’re the only one that sure to make money." This would be amazing. Imagine picking your streaming service based on who has the best app / recommendations / social baked in (or whatever you were looking for). But from a friend that works in TV sales - the platforms fight and pay for the exclusives. If it's going to everyone - pass. That money helps film the new stuff. I guess music has an advantage in the respect that it doesn't really work like that - and it's much cheaper to record an album. That's why it's so frustrating when music services fragment.

kevinherron 8y ago

I absolutely used to pirate all my music. Then Spotify came along. Pandora first, but I can't remember if I had completely stopped using mp3 at that point. I maybe had an iPod full of music I didn't pay for. Can't really remember the timelines here. Either way, just like with movie and TV, I'll happily pay for streaming if the selection is there.

deleted 8y ago
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whiteboardr 8y ago
> I'll happily pay for streaming if the selection is there. This. A million times.
braythwayt 8y ago
“Your typical architecture astronaut will take a fact like “Napster is a peer-to-peer service for downloading music” and ignore everything but the architecture, thinking it’s interesting because it’s peer to peer, completely missing the point that it’s interesting because you can type the name of a song and listen to it right away. ... “Talk about missing the point. If Napster wasn’t peer-to-peer but it did let you type the name of a song and then listen to it, it would have been just as popular.” —Joel Spolsky, “Don’t Let Architecture Astronauts Scare You,” 2001 https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/04/21/dont-let-architecture-astronauts-scare-you/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/04/21/dont-let-architect... ——— In the last 17 years, that quote keeps popping up because the companies that focus on letting you type the name of a song and listen to it right away have made money, while those that introduce friction to support some label’s business model? Not so much. But they keep complaining about “piracy.” 90% of piracy is eliminating friction. This past weekend, I bought the new Doctor Who on iTunes. I paid because Apple gave me a lot of ways to type the name of the show and watch it right away. Same reason I’ve spent thousands on music with them. It’s not about the price, it’s about the convenience.
- adrianN 8y ago
  It is also about price though. I'd "rent" a lot more movies online if the price were the same as when I rented them on DVD, like fifty cents per day. However it costs like four Euros to stream a movie from Prime Video.

mgkimsal 8y ago

which one do i count in, if I participate legally (spotify, purchases, etc) but also pirate? am I counted in the 6 or the 4?

fixermark 8y ago
It's likely the answer is "yes," since there's no way to deduplicate your activity.
sp332 8y ago
You'll be in the 84% who pay for music subscriptions and in the 38% who pirate.

barking 8y ago

i'd be wary of anything the IFPI, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry present as fact. Similar organisations were until recently engaged in shakedowns of small businesses for even playing the radio. Even after this was ruled illegal in Europe we used to still get a letter every year demanding we pay up for the benefits music was bringing our business.

peterburkimsher 8y ago

Right now I'm spending a week at Taizé, a retreat centre in France. There's access to Internet only from 9:30 am - 8 pm, for 15 minutes at a time, then a forced 10 minute break (unless I change MAC address). I don't have a bank account here, so I can't pay for a 2 year subscription for 4G. I also don't have a job. I'm grateful for my offline music collection keeping me alive right now. Music is especially important when times are tough, and it's in those difficult times that money and subscription-level stability are hard to find.

Rjevski 8y ago
Prepaid SIM card?

k__ 8y ago

I simply don't listen to music as much as I used to. Today a Youtube playlist is often enough for me.

mnm1 8y ago

Streaming services are nice, but I haven't yet found one that contains the complete discography that is available through torrents and other means. What's worse, what's available changes often so songs that are available now may not be available next week. In other words, streaming services provide a service, but they are far from replacing other means. If a service popped up that provided streaming of all the music I wanted to listen to 100% of the time, then it might be worth paying for. Another use case is mixing songs which usually requires local copies. Basically, all streaming services are deficient in some way so it shouldn't be any surprise that piracy continues.

TomMarius 8y ago

Yeah - I can't easily buy losless recordings that I'd get as files that could reside on my NAS, so tough luck. Streaming services offer less than a third of what I listen to, and their UX is idiotic. I cancelled my Spotify after I found out that my downloaded songs are deleted from my phone for the fourth time for some unknown reason, that really pisses you off on a 10-hour road trip.

boomboomsubban 8y ago

>Stream-ripping users are more likely to say that they rip music so they have music to listen to offline. This means they can avoid paying for a premium streaming subscription, This doesn't make sense. A premium subscription service doesn't give you access offline, and usually won't help with cellular data caps.

alexedw 8y ago
Both Spotify[1] and Apple Music[2] offer offline downloads to premium users. [1] https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/the_basics/listen-offline/ https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/the_basics/list... [2] https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT204839 https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT204839
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  Which you cannot move to another device and need their broken media player to play. Thanks but no thanks. Have a real DRM-free shop instead please. Without idiotic user unfriendly lawyer requiring license to use.
  - thecatspaw 8y ago
    spotify also opens up the API for third party media players if you have a premium account
  - Mindwipe 8y ago
    Customers have pretty overwhelmingly decided they don't want that, as a whole.
    - Krasnol 8y ago
      Did they? Or did they just bend down to what's out there?
- andrewla 8y ago
  As does Google Play Music [1]. Amazon Music Unlimited does as well, but only allows to supported devices [2]. [1] https://support.google.com/googleplaymusic/answer/1250232?hl=en https://support.google.com/googleplaymusic/answer/1250232?hl... [2] https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201377740 https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...

isthatart 8y ago

From the pdf at the end of the article, this estimate is based on a study of 19000 consumers from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, UK, US. The population of all these countries is 1.5 billion, but there are more than 3 billion internet users. Also, a study based on 0.000001 of the 1.5 billion population?

thx4allthestuff 8y ago

There are two things in this world that I have no problem with anyone in need stealing - food and music. I will politely look away. When I was a kid I pirated music, as well as music production software. I grew up pretty poor and I wouldn't have had those things otherwise (the only reason we had a computer was because of oil dividends given to all Alaskan residents once per year). I don't feel like anyone really lost out because of me downloading those things when I was young. But I know that the music industry eventually gained a lifetime subscriber (currently Apple Music, for many years now - family plan), and don't even get me started on the money I drop on software synthesizers. The good fortune that drizzled on me as a kid came back to those people as a raging storm. Advertisers know exactly what they need to show me when they want more of my money (those sweet, shiny synths), and I'm not even mad at them. They're almost like books now, where I don't even need to use them, I just like having them and knowing they're mine. That being said, as a long time amateur electronic musician, I'd love for people to pirate my music. As it stands I can't seem to even pay them to take it (with music that is).

kgwxd 8y ago
Stealing is the wrong word for digital music. Copying. It's just copying. And, in most cases, it's at an immeasurable cost to anyone. To use the terms "pirating" and "stealing" not only make it seem much worse than it actually is, it waters down the mental image of legitimate use of those words, making the actual acts seem less serious. "Copycats" would be a fairer term.
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  Money is imaginary too - taking a piece of paper isn't really stealing? This whole pedantic argument has been used to rationalize stiffing artists for their work for decades, and its tiresome.
  - kgwxd 8y ago
    Copying a piece of paper isn't stealing. Edit: Actually, now that I think about it, you might have to steal it to make the copy. Your analogy is useless for this argument. Money might be an abstract concept but bills and coins aren't imaginary. Try an analogy with digital currency then maybe there be something to talk about, but I'm guessing anything you can come up with will actually be talking about "hacking" or "fraud", not "stealing".

kgwxd 8y ago

Correlation does not imply causation. It seems unlikely the music itself is driving people to hijack ships, kidnap, rape and murder on such a large scale. Maybe there's something in the water.

PhasmaFelis 8y ago
Are you thinking that "pirate" is a dysphemism dreamed up by industry propagandists? The first software pirates named themselves that. The industry would rather call them "thieves" or "criminals," something with less of a quaint, romantic feel in the modern day.
- kgwxd 8y ago
  Just a joke based on Stallman comments[1]. If that's the case, then it seems the founding fathers did everyone a disservice. Everyone would be laughing at the MPAA and RIAA if they were constantly campaigning against "copycats", maybe even Capitol Hill. It's not too late to change the term if we all join in. [1]https://stallman.org/articles/end-war-on-sharing.html https://stallman.org/articles/end-war-on-sharing.html
  - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
    They wouldn't be calling them "copycats." They'd be calling them "thieves." Even more so than they already do, I mean. "Pirate" is better. A pirate is a romantic antihero in the public eye; a thief is just a greedy thug.

wtmt 8y ago

Somehow I don't like the "rental model" for songs and books that one may enjoy multiple times in one's life (compared to movies that are usually more ephemeral, and there may not be many that one would want to watch multiple times). So "owning" — the rights to copy and play the music anywhere, anytime and on any device — seems like a better choice than supporting streaming services where you can't really say if you'd be able to listen to your favorite song tomorrow.

ghaff 8y ago
I feel similar for music I actually care about. That said, I'm coming from a place where I already had a large collection of music ripped from CDs I bought (plus from the early days of Napster mostly to replace music I had on vinyl). And TBH I mostly don't care that much about new music. I still buy some music even though I subscribe to Apple Music. But if I were coming from a place where I was starting out and owned no music, I might think differently.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
Yup. Getting a Spotify account and then Netflix account made me forget the desire to pirate. Fast forward a couple years, my favourite songs and movies disappearing from those services made me seriously reconsider the value proposition, compared to visiting a well known Bay of buccaneers.

Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago

Personally, I pirate unless I can buy the music directly from the artist and download it in a lossless, DRM free format, using only open source software (or websites like Bandcamp). Maybe about 10% of my collection is paid for.

mabedan 8y ago
what does the open source thing has to do with artists being able to earn a living or not?
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
  It's about establishing a mutually respectful relationship between the artist and consumer.
  - jmull 8y ago
    I think you unconditionally dictating all the terms is not respectful of the artist.
    - ddevault 8y ago
      These are simple terms that serve to preserve the music. It serves the interests of a third party, not the musician or consumer, if these terms are not met.
      - jmull 8y ago
        I think you should talk to the artists before pirating their music and see what they think. Just deciding for yourself when it's OK has nothing to do with respect.
        Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
        I think you and I just see it differently.

leothekim 8y ago

I don't see any stats showing a trend over time. This YouGov report indicates piracy is actually dropping in one country over the past 5 years (from 18% of Britons to 10% of Britons). https://yougov.co.uk/news/2018/08/02/number-britons-illegally-downloading-music-falls/ https://yougov.co.uk/news/2018/08/02/number-britons-illegall...

ada1981 8y ago

I think we can at least reduce that number down to 2 out of 5 without much cost or intervention.

tshannon 8y ago
I disagree. Without diligence, that number could skyrocket as high as 8 out of 20. Where would we be then?
- ada1981 8y ago
  I hadn’t considered this as deeply as I should have. I actually recall something out of the Regan Administration where a similar scenario actually ended up with numbers of 20 out of 50 - however that was largely speculative and not officially confirmed.

jhabdas 8y ago

Copyright is a scam from a previous world. Go get it bois: NewPipe (A free lightweight YouTube frontend for Android.) - https://f-droid.org/app/org.schabi.newpipe https://f-droid.org/app/org.schabi.newpipe

fixermark 8y ago

That's way down from when 10/10 music consumers were pirates, just trading songs with each other around campfires and town squares without deep thought paid to credit. Seriously, exclusive rights to music creation and reproduction are a pretty new thing; I think humanity will survive this "recent" trend.

jMyles 8y ago
You're sentiment is more charitable than mine. If anybody ever tries to control some other person's activity in this way, and it happens to be my music that's at issue, that will certainly not be an appropriate position to take vis a vis my creation. (Not that my music is really worth anything to anyone, except maybe my song at DjangoCon 2012 :-) ). I just don't understand how these ideas have even become so pervasive. The idea that I can own a song (or any data) to the exclusion of preventing someone from copying bytes from one drive to another... it's just so strange.
- mordae 8y ago
  People don't really care and just repeat the narrative. "Musician has to eat, too, right?" Most conservative people around me don't really care about IP right. Heck, they don't even understand them at all! I've seen them repeatedly pirating images from Google or copying their music using ripping tools while still advocating for copyright.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Also patents. People are all for patents because they believe that one day they'll have a brilliant idea and make money this way. Well, patents are[0] how you deprive society of being able to use that idea when the time is ripe for it to be used. -- [0] - with the possible exception of pharmaceuticals.
    - Ajedi32 8y ago
      Why are pharmaceuticals an exception? What makes them different?

Ace17 8y ago

Could we please stop using the loaded term "pirate"? Attacking ships and killing people is way worse than "stealing" anyway!

consp 8y ago
The term is in my eyes not used to describe the act of violence in this sense but most likely for living out side of the law and ignoring most authorities.
- kwhitefoot 8y ago
  Well then it is even more inappropriate because most music 'pirates' are pretty much indistinguishable from the general population and certainly do not live outside the law or ignore most authorities.
  - xaqfox 8y ago
    Do you expect to listen to sea-shanties on pirate radio?
    - cocacola1 8y ago
      I certainly do. After playing Black Flag, sea shanties started to grow on me.
logfromblammo 8y ago
Words in English change their meaning based on usage in popular culture. Ever since the last of the "real" pirates was hanged, the pirate has become a fictional archetype from the Age of Sail. The pirate is now a form of self-governing rebel against authority, an era-appropriate gangster with a heart ranging from black as coal to something far short of a heart of gold--gilded brass, at best. They make great anti-heroes. They cheat, but the game was already rigged. Contrast with navies and marine corps that also attack ships and kill people, but do so under the aegis of state-sanctioned legitimacy. And they have a strict, authoritarian command hierarchy, rather than the freewheeling pirate charters that only invested absolute authority in the captain during the heat of combat. It certainly doesn't help that the libertarian crowd with fantasies of living statelessly (unflagged vessels) in international waters (seasteading) would be considered by the law of the sea to be legally indistinguishable from pirates. Your pleas are therefore likely to go unheeded, because "pirate" is indeed a loaded term, but it isn't loaded with a powder charge and 9-inch iron ball, not by a long shot. Pirates are now the proto-punks, the anti-authoritarian rebels of the sea. They are the ultimate self-interested libertarians, looting those who are plundering the new world colonies and shipping the silver back home to the king. As media distributors have colonized the new world of artists that work in recordings that can be duplicated endlessly with little effort, the new pirates rebel against their copyrights and plunder the ships filled with gold, bound for Wall Street and City of London. The metaphor is just too apt.

AdmiralAsshat 8y ago

I like owning my media. The idea that I can pay Amazon/Apple/Google for a piece of media and they can subsequently yank it out of my library down the line because they lost their license to distribute it does not sit well with me. I imagine it doesn't sit well with alot of people, either. Until the dominant form of distribution allows people to OWN their music, I believe that piracy will persist.

tordanik 8y ago
I share the desire to permanently own media. Amazon have been selling music as DRM-free mp3 files since 2008, though, so that option is already available from a legal, mainstream online shop.
- AdmiralAsshat 8y ago
  I'm glad that Amazon sells DRM-free MP3s (although I imagine they only did it to remain competitive with iTunes). They don't do it with their eBooks, however. Any time I buy an ebook through them, the first thing I do is download it to my PC and strip the DRM via Calibre so that I have a DRM-free version should Amazon ever decide to yank the original again.
lev99 8y ago
Why do you feel a strong desire for ownership? I enjoy going to art museums and experiencing visual art, but I never experienced the inclination to purchase any of it. Music to me is a lot like that.
- HeadsUpHigh 8y ago
  It's the difference between data and a physical item. I don't expect to own every physical item I view but I do expect limitless access to my data, especially if I've paid for it.
  - lev99 8y ago
    I don't draw such a strong lines between physical and virtual items. Even in the case where you buy a song, you don't have limitless rights to it. It would be illegal, for example, to buy a CD and use a song from that CD in a television commercial. You don't own the song, you are purchasing the right to replay the song in some situations. DRM purchases and streaming services are remarkably similar deals.

deleted 8y ago

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petecooper 8y ago

I'm another non-streamer and I get most of my music from Bandcamp. The appeal to me is a lot of smaller labels and artists are on a more level playing field, I know more money goes to the artists, and the merch selection is great. I'm of an era that I remember CD albums would cost 15-20GBP sometimes, and I'm still very album-oriented in my listening. My 'thing' these days is buying digital copies of releases I like, and buying a vinyl copy of releases I really like, so I have a memento. The shipping costs can be steep, especially trans-Atlantic, but the tangible collection of records in a flight case is the closest thing to a safe of valuables that I own. Buy the vinyl, and typically there's an included copy of the digital version (either a code in the sleeve or a gratis copy in Bandcamp's case), so I can then download the FLAC and make whatever format I want from there. Total price typically ends up being more expensive than one of those 15-20GBP CDs from a bygone era, but I've got a digital copy I can play over and over, and a physical copy as a keepsake. I've found a lot of new music from Bandcamp. Their articles are high quality, and have directed me toward all kinds of music I wouldn't usually listen to. (Disclaimer: active customer of Bandcamp, not connected in any financial or professional sense, no other affiliation…though I do think about applying to work with them from time to time.) Edit: I use the same username here as I do on Bandcamp if anyone wants to snoop on my collection and/or wantlist, or be internet friends etc.

brusch64 8y ago
Bandcamp is my preferred way of buying music these days. The only advantage of physival media is the record cover. But I am really pissed if I can't download the album or if I am just able to download a shitty MP3 of the music I've bought. So Bandcamp works great for me. It offers all the options I want (FLAC) and I like that a band can set the price to 0$ so you can download it from Bandcamp for free but you can give them money if you want to. Awesome experience all around. And with the music I like most of the bands are on Bandcamp.
- eertami 8y ago
  What do you find so shitty about MP3, are you morally opposed to it's origin/licensing? Quality wise for listening you aren't going to tell the difference between a -v0 MP3 and FLAC even if you think otherwise. For anyone that wants to claim otherwise, unless you've had someone setup an A/B test with a significant amount of cases you're falling victim to placebo. I say this as a professional audio engineer, who long ago would always seek out FLAC. Now, unless I need to edit or re-encode a file the MP3 is just as good, far from shitty.

zimablue 8y ago

This argument about "violation of rights" which assumes some absolutist intellectual property right, I realised you don't even have to engage in it. If I could push a button and transfer a million pounds from Ed Sheeran's account to mine, I'd do it without hesitation. Even if you accept the argument that I really should pay him $10 per album he should count himself lucky that society has constrained my theft to those limits.

WalkTalk 8y ago

Thank you for sharing. I'd say the virtual product market needs to adjust, it's not a new idea, but whatever laws are applied (and piracy laws are strict in my country) only a few pirates end up fined and the torrent pages just move their servers offshore. I'm sad to see those few poor souls getting caught because really, it looks like everybody is doing that.

40acres 8y ago

I used to pirate music, tv and movies a lot. Every hit show, every interesting album. For me the downsides were tied to the hassle of finding good quality streams, there wasn't much friction but there was enough that when streaming came along and I had the disposable income to afford it I went all in. Streaming will probably never be 90%+ of consumption but as long as it's a frictionless experience that is portable it will serve many.

Illniyar 8y ago

Analyzing data for illegal downloads has notoriously being very hard to do. Where are they getting those numbers?

rdl 8y ago

I find it impossible to pay any RIAA affiliated artist or label for music after the battles we had in the late 90s/early 00s. I pirate some music, but basically listen to audiobooks (which I happily pay for; I probably spend $1k/yr on Audible) instead of music 95% of the time. I basically view it as supporting terrorism, even though all of the individual execs from back then are gone by now.

bobbymcbobbob 8y ago

I can imagine the music industry response as I type... "Arrrr(gh)!"

rchaud 8y ago

It's important for me to have a permanent digital copy of the music I pay for. The modern streaming services' subscription model doesn't allow for that. Worse still, rather than being a dumb pipe, which is literally what cyber lockers were, they now have to be a taste-making platform, a modern MTV trying to shape our preferences and stuffing ads anywhere they can. I find the music I want by reading community based sources like Last.fm, RateYourMusic, genre-specialist website, reviews on personal blogs, and magazines/web publications I trust (e.g. the Quietus). Thankfully sites like Bandcamp is still around, and offer a decent way to discover new artists and get DRM-free downloads, no questions asked.

cailloud 8y ago

I for one, love to get drunk on rum and pillage coastvillages Arrrr gimme them shiny discs ye landscruffy or we will keelhaul ye arrrr In all seriousness, i like to own my music and i love bandcamp. I'm pretty poor so yeah a large part of my collection is stolen from the shores of india. But just like books, when i have some extra money i will buy from artists who i love listening too. If i was rich i would buy everything, but i am not and i still want to listen too music.

hinkley 8y ago

I wonder how small Lars’ pool is now. (Man, can I hold a grudge for a long time)

jcoffland 8y ago

Conflating piracy with copying music is fragrantly disingenuous. Pirating is the theft of someone else's goods by force. Music "piracy" is the circumvention of artificial scarcity to duplicate information and it leaves the original property intact. It was a clever con getting us to use the same word.

EpicEng 8y ago
Meaning changes over time. Most of us have accepted a new, alternate definition of "piracy" in regards to digital media. Whether or not you (or I, because I don't either) like it is irrelevant.
- jcoffland 8y ago
  I'm for making language mean what we want it to mean and I oppose the use of the word piracy to mean copying. Is that not how language changes?
  - EpicEng 8y ago
    Well, yes, but a word means whatever the majority believes it to mean. You're in the minority, so... I get that it's a tactic used by the business end of things, but it's where we're at now.

dijit 8y ago

Anecdatum: I was a big music buyer because iTunes made it quite easy. I like to “own” my music, so it was appealing- DRM free, album art and metadata formatted correctly. But then they nerfed the ever loving shit out of the music app on my phone and force fed me Apple Music. Since I ideologically disagree with that model I went back to the old ways of CDs and luckily I have Plex which handles my music on my phone now. It’s not as nice as before but it’s better than being forced into a subscription.

throwawayse1 8y ago

As an eastern european I've gotten so used to pirating everything in my childhood that even now (25 yo) I pirate ALL of my: books, movies, music, games.

anon49124 8y ago

Then music is priced too high. (And musicians don't get a big enough cut either.)

notmyaccount 8y ago

Not surprising. I was one of the pirates before streaming services came about. Now I am not. Or maybe it was because I was younger and had a finite amount of pocket money to spend on an infinite amount of desires. But streaming has definitely made it lots easier to access music.

trey-jones 8y ago

I certainly did it in college and after (when I didn't have any money? sorry, I guess). Streaming services are all I need now. I don't need to own it, just listen to it.

gehsty 8y ago

I’d say more like 2 out of 5

gwbas1c 8y ago

I still pirate music... When it's not available in a streaming service, and not available legally for a fair price! I think the best way to address piracy is with strong copyright reform. Specifically, once content is sold for mass consumption, it needs to make its way into streaming services. Things like artificial scarcity need to be phased out.

upbeatlinux 8y ago

Why does four out of ten sound better than two out of five?

screye 8y ago

I am of a strong opinion that piracy is about access rather than stealing. Piracy for the most part is used by 2 types of people : 1. Those who would never have bought the product because of lack of income to do so. 2. Those who find the product to hard to access. Steam is an excellent example of dealing with both. Steam sales and location specific prices solve problem 1. Everything one platform everywhere in the world solves 2.

saganus 8y ago
Just thinking out loud here, but, how long until Steam starts offering a Music service? Maybe not for big labels/artists, but if they did something like Greenlight for indie bands... I could see it working... Maybe. Or am I way off here?
- spencerflem 8y ago
  They have a player, and sell soundtracks. It's not very good right now though.
- jarcane 8y ago
  I'd just as soon use Bandcamp honestly. Steam's attempts at media sales have been awful. Videos are broken and often won't play, music is usually just a handful of MP3s buried deep in the Steam folders.
  - saganus 8y ago
    Good point. It never even occurred to me that they would sell music so no wonder they are bad a it, at least for now.
jarcane 8y ago
Thanks to Steam I haven't bothered to pirate a PC game in nearly a decade. Thanks to Google Play, Spotify, and Bandcamp, the same can be said for music. Only TV and film really holds out. I just can't get my favorite shows in any sensible fashion, and so much just isn't even available to me. Netflix where I live at times feels like a waste of money save for a few favorite originals. TV especially is just awful, a lot of my favorite shows simply can't be had for any price, because of arbitrary exclusivity deals, time delays, bad organization, and region locking nonsense. Even if I cared for any of the local content here in my country, it's all spread out over multiple streaming sites, and quite a lot isn't available or has random availability.

INTPenis 8y ago

I believe a large part of these pirates are in the increasingly connected world outside of Europe and North America. I consider myself a pirate, without shame. My first games on C64 were pirated and since then I've been involved in piratbyrån and the swedish pirate party. But I make enough money now to use Google Play Music and rarely pirate music these days. Mostly movies, shows and audiobooks. So since this article specifically mentions music I make the assumption that it's not talking about my world. A vast majority of people around me use streaming services for music today. But I have friends in Thailand and Vietnam and there it's quite common to see pirated movies playing on long bus rides with VIP bus lines for example. I also have friends on Croatia and Bosnia and there it's also still very common to go to a neighborhood pirate who will provide you with CDs of your favorite artists. So I would be much less surprised if they were still pirating music in these places rather than using streaming services. So there's a big world out there with an ever growing connected population, Africa, Asia, South America, and I'd speculate that they're driving up those numbers.

clubm8 8y ago

Are the other 6 just not consumers (100% piracy)? :)

readhn 8y ago

That is actually lower than i expected - since globally only some people are able to afford music services like spotify, apple music etc.

ravenstine 8y ago

4 out of 10? More like 9.9 out of 10 if you count playing unauthorized albums on YouTube, which I've seen everyone do at least once.

Aeolun 8y ago

Of course, music companies see this as a problem instead of an opportunity. More pawsuits it is!

8bitsrule 8y ago

Back in the day, I used to listen to top-40 radio all day long. I bought some of the tunes I liked. The radio stations paid DJs to sift through incoming tunes and air the good stuff. Yeah, I got spoiled into thinking that you got to listen to stuff before you forked out for some of it. I liked that model a lot better than paying for a streaming service. My guess is that's still a fine model for most people.

seizethecheese 8y ago
This strikes me as unwarranted nostalgia. With Spotify, you can find a universe of playlist curated by all the people with the best taste in the world. I find this far more compelling than being stuck with a handful of gatekeepers for my city in the genres that I like.
- 8bitsrule 8y ago
  Nostalgic for good music? yep, that's me. Good DJ's prove their qualifications with every record they spin. I don't need an ISP and a subscription. The genre I like is music written by talented composers and performed by talented musicians. What's the name of that playlist?

jokoon 8y ago

Louis ck used a good solution. You just paid and downloaded the thing directly. The problem is the intermediary. People don't want to give money to labels. It's a little like buying food to your local producer. I guess even Bandcamp makes money. Consumers would rather pirate than see a fraction of their money land on some accountant desk for copyright management. Content is easily copiable, and did someone to live on their content doesn't require a high price. In the digital age i don't see how an album could cost more than $5, or even $1 or $2 if you're not a full time artist. Louie CK made millions that way, I agree that he was already popular though. Just let people set their price (Radiohead did that), and advertise that method on a clean torrent, I'm sure people would pay.

stuaxo 8y ago

This seems very low, in the days of tapes it would have been nearly 100%.