7 ms·

Music piracy is down but still very much in play

24 points by yuhong 11y ago

yuhong 11y ago
Did anyone notice that RIAA does much less "anti-piracy" lobbying etc now compared to the MPAA?
- anigbrowl 11y ago
  I bet you'd see a correlation between bandwidth availability as a function of the average media file size and lobbying activity - which is another way to say the RIAA fought when it happened, mostly lost, and took the best of the available bad options that eventually emerged. Film was safer for a while due to the relatively huge file sizes for video, plus film has some slightly different industry dynamics. FTA: But the music industry is still trying to recover from piracy's heyday. Last year, total music industry revenue was about $15 billion worldwide, well below the 1999 peak of $38 billion. Ouch - think about that, seeing >60% of your industry revenue go up in smoke. And please don't give me the old line about labels ripping off artists - big labels did, somewhat, but they weren't nearly as bad as Courtney Love made out, and meantime tons of small labels went to the wall because they didn't have the revenue cushion that the big ones did. I was a DJ back in the 90s (and I was probably spending a couple of thousand $ a year on music at the time) and it was a much more economically diverse industry pre-Napster. I can't say I regard the commodification of music as an improvement, really.
  - yuhong 11y ago
    At least we have vinyl sales rising now, though I expect digital to take the majority of the lost CD sales for obvious reasons.
  - iamben 11y ago
    Sure, you can say 'ouch, 60% of your industry' - but you could say the same about the guys breeding horses when cars came along (or whatever) - times change. Of course it hurts when the golden goose stops laying eggs, but if you don't adapt to the world, how do you expect to survive? The labels (majors especially) spent so long and so much trying to stuff the genie back in the bottle when they could have been adapting to the new landscape. As for the indie labels - it's a massive shame, I agree, although many adapted and survived. But I'd argue indie artists have it easier than before - you can record and distribute an album for basically the cost of your time these days. (Although, that in itself is both a good, and bad thing.)
    - jamespo 11y ago
      How accurate is the horse analogy? The music industry is still the one producing the product, it's just very easy to get it for free nowadays.
      - iamben 11y ago
        Haha, not incredibly - it was the first thing that came in to my head - but you got what I meant! I'm sure there's a better one :-) The major labels (certainly), controlled the distribution channels (and I know a lot of indies used a major for distribution, when it was all physical media) - and they don't, so much, anymore. My point was they chose to fight the future rather than adapt to it, so other people came and stole the new business. There's what - 4 big labels? Had they come together they could have sewn up digital distribution before other companies (iTunes, then Spotify, etc etc) came and stole their revenues. Sure music industry profits may be down, but that money is probably just being made elsewhere. I guess change is hard. The 50 something record exec behind the big desk in the year 1999 who's never sent an email, getting told by some 20 year old kid in a winamp t-shirt that 'MP3s are the future' is probably going to laugh him out the office. When he realises people are taking music for free, in bulk, his reaction is(/was??!) probably - that's stealing, not 'how can we monetize this?'
    - yuhong 11y ago
      Do you know why the majors reacted badly where the indies didn't? I wonder if it is due to the culture.
    - lentil_soup 11y ago
      Honest question, anyone knows how easy is it for a band to put their stuff on something like Spotify? Or do they still need to go through a label?
      - lentil_soup 11y ago
        Should have googled that before: https://support.spotify.com/is/problems/#!/article/I-m-an-artist-how-do-I-get-my-music-on-Spotify https://support.spotify.com/is/problems/#!/article/I-m-an-ar...
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
    It's disingenuous to suggest the difference in revenue is because of piracy. 1970s and 1980s era record labels would sign an artist, throw development money at him or her, give them a fair try in the market with at least a couple of albums, and only drop them if they were going nowhere. Then the emphasis shifted to the show-me-the-money insta-hit act, and manufactured waxwork acts like Justin Bieber. Music got a lot less interesting, and people found other things to do with their time. So sales crashed. There's actually more good music being made than ever, but most of it lives on microlabels only hipsters know about, and the people making it all have day jobs. Even some of the better known names in dance/trance have day jobs. This is bad, because some of them are very talented and would easily have made a career out of it 30 years ago. Pop literally ate itself. The pirates just picked over the bones.
qq66 11y ago
Piracy is the reason that labels license their content to streaming services like Spotify. Without the threat of piracy, they would happily maintain the CD-era pricing.
- exodust 11y ago
  How about the idea that technology is the reason, not piracy? As the article mentions, there's a broadly accepted argument that fans have been ripped off for years before the internet came along. It's not about "Napster" coming along, it's about the internet arriving and giving us new ways to get media. CD-era comes to an end regardless of legal status of any particular online resource. As more artists chose to upload their own music, the big-wig artists looked on, dwindling sales infringed upon by... what's this, indie bands previously only seen at local pubs? The horror! Access > Granted is defined as "piracy" too often, but I'm not saying piracy isn't a thing, it's just not the whole picture. I can't believe I'm paying for Netflix, but then again, no ads, HD quality. As for music.... hmmm. TO be honest I'd appreciate Netflix getting into music and offering me a good deal on their add-on music service. I'd prefer not to pay another whole $10-ish per month for music. I want package deals because my wallet wants that.
yc1010 11y ago
I am in Ireland, I wanted 1 single track (apparently there is no such thing as music shops or singles anymore, i feel old) So I went to Amazon.com found the track for $0.99 and went to pay, guess what "your credit card has to be issued by US bank" error, despite me having positive amazon.com gift balance with no need to use credit card. Fine so I went to amazon.co.uk, same track GBP 1.00 (notice the markup) and similar error once again despite me having credit on UK site and buying for years electronics and just about everything else for myself. So in end I went to google and found what I wanted on mp3juices.is or something like that. These music companies deserve to go extinct for wasting half an hour of a prospective customers time and putting up silly barriers.
- netcan 11y ago
  In fairness, I would say that this is an issue with money/banking/credit cards and the various regulatory frameworks in this area. It is remarkably difficult to just trade money in exchange for goods and services online. Between fraud, transaction costs, anti-"money laundering" requirements and general complexity the systems that actually exist are just not very good. If you fall outside the realm of a simple money-in-exchange-for-stuff paradigm, you are screwed. Actual online retailers interfacing with customers need to make this mess as invisible as possible, but they are working with crappy inputs. I increasingly suspect that the banking industry is the biggest economic bottleneck in advanced economies.
  - yc1010 11y ago
    Actually in this case I had a positive USD credit/balance on amazon.com account due to giftcards I bought with bitcoin via gyft.com, same with amazon.co.uk with giftcard bought via giftoff.com using Bitcoin again. 3-4 year old amazon account with long history of purchases going into 6 digits, no chargebacks (not possible obviously) and my Irish debit card also on file with them. The risk of fraud/charback to Amazon (either US or UK branch) was exactly zero with me.
  - toyg 11y ago
    > this is an issue with money/banking/credit cards and the various regulatory frameworks in this area No, this is an issue with streams of bits being considered goods that have to be traded differently depending on the region, and that responsibility lies entirely with music distributors. If there was a single global license for selling a given piece of music, it wouldn't matter what you're buying, how you're buying it or where from.
andresmanz 11y ago
I legally download all the music I want for free without any effort. Because here we "pay for that music by buying a device". Too bad the wrong people receive that money. So I can't say that I like it, but on the other hand I barely download any music. It's maybe one track per month.
- collyw 11y ago
  What country are you in?
  - andresmanz 11y ago
    I'm in Switzerland. It's OK to download music and movies for personal use, as long as you don't spread them yourself.
  - fredley 11y ago
    It's called a "Private Copying Levy", and it's done a few different ways in a number of countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy
robogimp 11y ago
Record companies seem to be solving the piracy issue by promoting terrible music.
rawe 11y ago
Situation in Germany: - GEMA causes video blocking on youtube - there is the GEMA-Vermutung (it is assumed that if you play music in public, it is from a GEMA member and you have to pay a fee or prove that the music was from non-GEMA-members) - there is a Pauschalabgabe fee for storage media (and devices) for the potential use as backup/storage for the music I already paid for (but I am not allowed to crack copy "protection" on media). - there is a monthly fee for GEZ/Rundfunkbeitrag for state "independent" media bound to just living in a flat/house even if there is no device capable of playing media and not bound to actual use of their service. Most media on their online platforms is available for a short period of time (~1 week) and gets deleted after this, they use flash player and there are 3rd party tools [0] necessary so just search through all the media / get a direct link to feed into mplayer Should I throw even more money on these unfair systems by buying music/media? [0] http://www.mediathekdirekt.de/ http://www.mediathekdirekt.de/
Mimu 11y ago
I don't know if this is still true or not, but they make (made) damn sure their offer was so ridiculous people would actively try to go around it. The devices limitation? Who the fuck came up with this idea thinking it will be good? Greedy kids I won't cry if they disappear, which probably won't happen anytime soon. It's simple, people will go for the easiest solution. I barely know anyone illegally downloading videogames since Steam became the go to, and steam is like a big DRM but so easy to use, always download at max speed etc, people just use it, including myself.
Mimu 11y ago
I don't know if this is still true or not, but they make (made) damn sure their offer was so ridiculous people would actively try to go around it. The devices limitation? Who the fuck came up with this idea thinking it will be good? Greedy I won't cry if they disappear, which probably won't happen anytime soon. It's simple, people will go for the easiest solution. I barely know anyone illegally downloading videogames since Steam became the go to, and steam is like a big DRM but so easy to use, always download at max speed etc, people just use it, including myself.
mikerichards 11y ago
Can anyone help with Mike D's charity (Beasty Boys). Thank you
EnderMB 11y ago
I wonder how many people will pirate Taylor Swift's music since she's exclusively linked to Apple Music? I'm willing to bet a lot of Spotify users will dust off uTorrent (or whatever people are using for torrents nowadays) and just download the album she has restricted her fans from listening to legally. It's all about ease of access, surely? The introduction of Apple Music is good for music, but if it means that Spotify and Apple Music are going to further fragment accessible libraries of music then piracy will probably rise.
- rawe 11y ago
  uTorrent turned evil, same way as sourceforge did.
- nothrabannosir 11y ago
  > ...the album she has restricted her fans from listening to legally. Well, she is still making her music available online against a fair price. If you mean restriction in the sense of any restriction, then, yes, it's restricted. But so is Spotify, because for every service there is another one you don't publish on. Miss Swift was not happy with Spotify's negotiating terms. Her not playing ball with Spotify should not automatically be considered "restricting her fans from listening to her music legally," even though that's a side-effect. I'm not privy to the details of the negotiation, I don't know who's being unreasonable, if anyone. But just saying that she restricts her fans from listening to it, that implies it's her own fault and that people are in the right for just pirating it then. Not really.
  - EnderMB 11y ago
    While she's entitled to share her music with whoever she pleases, fans aren't going to see it that way. They'll see a greedy artist that wants more money, and is happy to restrict what is essentially uploading a bunch of music files to a server as a ransom for not getting that money. Given the way she immediately backtracked, I think most people see her move as nothing more than a publicity stunt between her and Apple to promote both her new album and Apple's new service. Spotify works because you're safe in the knowledge that you can listen to pretty much anything you want. With Apple Music in the picture, piracy will almost definitely rise, should artists decide to lock themselves onto specific platforms like Swift has chosen to.
clarry 11y ago
Please don't download our music, they said. As you wish. I won't ever listen to your music, I responded. It's their choice and their loss, not mine.
pessimizer 11y ago
My guess would be that music downloaders are slowing down/dropping out because they already have more music than they could ever listen to. From what I hear, a lot of music sharing has moved to sneakernet amongst friends. A palm-sized 2TB hard drive carries around 4 years worth of 192K mp3 audio.
_lce0 11y ago
> The rise of convenient, licensed streaming has helped cut U.S. file-sharing rates in half in the last decade. File-sharing isn't the problem!!

24 points by yuhong 11y ago

yuhong 11y ago

Did anyone notice that RIAA does much less "anti-piracy" lobbying etc now compared to the MPAA?

anigbrowl 11y ago
I bet you'd see a correlation between bandwidth availability as a function of the average media file size and lobbying activity - which is another way to say the RIAA fought when it happened, mostly lost, and took the best of the available bad options that eventually emerged. Film was safer for a while due to the relatively huge file sizes for video, plus film has some slightly different industry dynamics. FTA: But the music industry is still trying to recover from piracy's heyday. Last year, total music industry revenue was about $15 billion worldwide, well below the 1999 peak of $38 billion. Ouch - think about that, seeing >60% of your industry revenue go up in smoke. And please don't give me the old line about labels ripping off artists - big labels did, somewhat, but they weren't nearly as bad as Courtney Love made out, and meantime tons of small labels went to the wall because they didn't have the revenue cushion that the big ones did. I was a DJ back in the 90s (and I was probably spending a couple of thousand $ a year on music at the time) and it was a much more economically diverse industry pre-Napster. I can't say I regard the commodification of music as an improvement, really.
- yuhong 11y ago
  At least we have vinyl sales rising now, though I expect digital to take the majority of the lost CD sales for obvious reasons.
- iamben 11y ago
  Sure, you can say 'ouch, 60% of your industry' - but you could say the same about the guys breeding horses when cars came along (or whatever) - times change. Of course it hurts when the golden goose stops laying eggs, but if you don't adapt to the world, how do you expect to survive? The labels (majors especially) spent so long and so much trying to stuff the genie back in the bottle when they could have been adapting to the new landscape. As for the indie labels - it's a massive shame, I agree, although many adapted and survived. But I'd argue indie artists have it easier than before - you can record and distribute an album for basically the cost of your time these days. (Although, that in itself is both a good, and bad thing.)
  - jamespo 11y ago
    How accurate is the horse analogy? The music industry is still the one producing the product, it's just very easy to get it for free nowadays.
    - iamben 11y ago
      Haha, not incredibly - it was the first thing that came in to my head - but you got what I meant! I'm sure there's a better one :-) The major labels (certainly), controlled the distribution channels (and I know a lot of indies used a major for distribution, when it was all physical media) - and they don't, so much, anymore. My point was they chose to fight the future rather than adapt to it, so other people came and stole the new business. There's what - 4 big labels? Had they come together they could have sewn up digital distribution before other companies (iTunes, then Spotify, etc etc) came and stole their revenues. Sure music industry profits may be down, but that money is probably just being made elsewhere. I guess change is hard. The 50 something record exec behind the big desk in the year 1999 who's never sent an email, getting told by some 20 year old kid in a winamp t-shirt that 'MP3s are the future' is probably going to laugh him out the office. When he realises people are taking music for free, in bulk, his reaction is(/was??!) probably - that's stealing, not 'how can we monetize this?'
  - yuhong 11y ago
    Do you know why the majors reacted badly where the indies didn't? I wonder if it is due to the culture.
  - lentil_soup 11y ago
    Honest question, anyone knows how easy is it for a band to put their stuff on something like Spotify? Or do they still need to go through a label?
    - lentil_soup 11y ago
      Should have googled that before: https://support.spotify.com/is/problems/#!/article/I-m-an-artist-how-do-I-get-my-music-on-Spotify https://support.spotify.com/is/problems/#!/article/I-m-an-ar...
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  It's disingenuous to suggest the difference in revenue is because of piracy. 1970s and 1980s era record labels would sign an artist, throw development money at him or her, give them a fair try in the market with at least a couple of albums, and only drop them if they were going nowhere. Then the emphasis shifted to the show-me-the-money insta-hit act, and manufactured waxwork acts like Justin Bieber. Music got a lot less interesting, and people found other things to do with their time. So sales crashed. There's actually more good music being made than ever, but most of it lives on microlabels only hipsters know about, and the people making it all have day jobs. Even some of the better known names in dance/trance have day jobs. This is bad, because some of them are very talented and would easily have made a career out of it 30 years ago. Pop literally ate itself. The pirates just picked over the bones.

qq66 11y ago

Piracy is the reason that labels license their content to streaming services like Spotify. Without the threat of piracy, they would happily maintain the CD-era pricing.

exodust 11y ago
How about the idea that technology is the reason, not piracy? As the article mentions, there's a broadly accepted argument that fans have been ripped off for years before the internet came along. It's not about "Napster" coming along, it's about the internet arriving and giving us new ways to get media. CD-era comes to an end regardless of legal status of any particular online resource. As more artists chose to upload their own music, the big-wig artists looked on, dwindling sales infringed upon by... what's this, indie bands previously only seen at local pubs? The horror! Access > Granted is defined as "piracy" too often, but I'm not saying piracy isn't a thing, it's just not the whole picture. I can't believe I'm paying for Netflix, but then again, no ads, HD quality. As for music.... hmmm. TO be honest I'd appreciate Netflix getting into music and offering me a good deal on their add-on music service. I'd prefer not to pay another whole $10-ish per month for music. I want package deals because my wallet wants that.

yc1010 11y ago

I am in Ireland, I wanted 1 single track (apparently there is no such thing as music shops or singles anymore, i feel old) So I went to Amazon.com found the track for $0.99 and went to pay, guess what "your credit card has to be issued by US bank" error, despite me having positive amazon.com gift balance with no need to use credit card. Fine so I went to amazon.co.uk, same track GBP 1.00 (notice the markup) and similar error once again despite me having credit on UK site and buying for years electronics and just about everything else for myself. So in end I went to google and found what I wanted on mp3juices.is or something like that. These music companies deserve to go extinct for wasting half an hour of a prospective customers time and putting up silly barriers.

netcan 11y ago
In fairness, I would say that this is an issue with money/banking/credit cards and the various regulatory frameworks in this area. It is remarkably difficult to just trade money in exchange for goods and services online. Between fraud, transaction costs, anti-"money laundering" requirements and general complexity the systems that actually exist are just not very good. If you fall outside the realm of a simple money-in-exchange-for-stuff paradigm, you are screwed. Actual online retailers interfacing with customers need to make this mess as invisible as possible, but they are working with crappy inputs. I increasingly suspect that the banking industry is the biggest economic bottleneck in advanced economies.
- yc1010 11y ago
  Actually in this case I had a positive USD credit/balance on amazon.com account due to giftcards I bought with bitcoin via gyft.com, same with amazon.co.uk with giftcard bought via giftoff.com using Bitcoin again. 3-4 year old amazon account with long history of purchases going into 6 digits, no chargebacks (not possible obviously) and my Irish debit card also on file with them. The risk of fraud/charback to Amazon (either US or UK branch) was exactly zero with me.
- toyg 11y ago
  > this is an issue with money/banking/credit cards and the various regulatory frameworks in this area No, this is an issue with streams of bits being considered goods that have to be traded differently depending on the region, and that responsibility lies entirely with music distributors. If there was a single global license for selling a given piece of music, it wouldn't matter what you're buying, how you're buying it or where from.

andresmanz 11y ago

I legally download all the music I want for free without any effort. Because here we "pay for that music by buying a device". Too bad the wrong people receive that money. So I can't say that I like it, but on the other hand I barely download any music. It's maybe one track per month.

collyw 11y ago
What country are you in?
- andresmanz 11y ago
  I'm in Switzerland. It's OK to download music and movies for personal use, as long as you don't spread them yourself.
- fredley 11y ago
  It's called a "Private Copying Levy", and it's done a few different ways in a number of countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy

robogimp 11y ago

Record companies seem to be solving the piracy issue by promoting terrible music.

rawe 11y ago

Situation in Germany: - GEMA causes video blocking on youtube - there is the GEMA-Vermutung (it is assumed that if you play music in public, it is from a GEMA member and you have to pay a fee or prove that the music was from non-GEMA-members) - there is a Pauschalabgabe fee for storage media (and devices) for the potential use as backup/storage for the music I already paid for (but I am not allowed to crack copy "protection" on media). - there is a monthly fee for GEZ/Rundfunkbeitrag for state "independent" media bound to just living in a flat/house even if there is no device capable of playing media and not bound to actual use of their service. Most media on their online platforms is available for a short period of time (~1 week) and gets deleted after this, they use flash player and there are 3rd party tools [0] necessary so just search through all the media / get a direct link to feed into mplayer Should I throw even more money on these unfair systems by buying music/media? [0] http://www.mediathekdirekt.de/ http://www.mediathekdirekt.de/

Mimu 11y ago

I don't know if this is still true or not, but they make (made) damn sure their offer was so ridiculous people would actively try to go around it. The devices limitation? Who the fuck came up with this idea thinking it will be good? Greedy kids I won't cry if they disappear, which probably won't happen anytime soon. It's simple, people will go for the easiest solution. I barely know anyone illegally downloading videogames since Steam became the go to, and steam is like a big DRM but so easy to use, always download at max speed etc, people just use it, including myself.

Mimu 11y ago

I don't know if this is still true or not, but they make (made) damn sure their offer was so ridiculous people would actively try to go around it. The devices limitation? Who the fuck came up with this idea thinking it will be good? Greedy I won't cry if they disappear, which probably won't happen anytime soon. It's simple, people will go for the easiest solution. I barely know anyone illegally downloading videogames since Steam became the go to, and steam is like a big DRM but so easy to use, always download at max speed etc, people just use it, including myself.

mikerichards 11y ago

Can anyone help with Mike D's charity (Beasty Boys). Thank you

EnderMB 11y ago

I wonder how many people will pirate Taylor Swift's music since she's exclusively linked to Apple Music? I'm willing to bet a lot of Spotify users will dust off uTorrent (or whatever people are using for torrents nowadays) and just download the album she has restricted her fans from listening to legally. It's all about ease of access, surely? The introduction of Apple Music is good for music, but if it means that Spotify and Apple Music are going to further fragment accessible libraries of music then piracy will probably rise.

rawe 11y ago
uTorrent turned evil, same way as sourceforge did.
nothrabannosir 11y ago
> ...the album she has restricted her fans from listening to legally. Well, she is still making her music available online against a fair price. If you mean restriction in the sense of any restriction, then, yes, it's restricted. But so is Spotify, because for every service there is another one you don't publish on. Miss Swift was not happy with Spotify's negotiating terms. Her not playing ball with Spotify should not automatically be considered "restricting her fans from listening to her music legally," even though that's a side-effect. I'm not privy to the details of the negotiation, I don't know who's being unreasonable, if anyone. But just saying that she restricts her fans from listening to it, that implies it's her own fault and that people are in the right for just pirating it then. Not really.
- EnderMB 11y ago
  While she's entitled to share her music with whoever she pleases, fans aren't going to see it that way. They'll see a greedy artist that wants more money, and is happy to restrict what is essentially uploading a bunch of music files to a server as a ransom for not getting that money. Given the way she immediately backtracked, I think most people see her move as nothing more than a publicity stunt between her and Apple to promote both her new album and Apple's new service. Spotify works because you're safe in the knowledge that you can listen to pretty much anything you want. With Apple Music in the picture, piracy will almost definitely rise, should artists decide to lock themselves onto specific platforms like Swift has chosen to.

clarry 11y ago

Please don't download our music, they said. As you wish. I won't ever listen to your music, I responded. It's their choice and their loss, not mine.

pessimizer 11y ago

My guess would be that music downloaders are slowing down/dropping out because they already have more music than they could ever listen to. From what I hear, a lot of music sharing has moved to sneakernet amongst friends. A palm-sized 2TB hard drive carries around 4 years worth of 192K mp3 audio.

_lce0 11y ago

> The rise of convenient, licensed streaming has helped cut U.S. file-sharing rates in half in the last decade. File-sharing isn't the problem!!