Easier Streaming Services Put Dent in Illegal Downloading (bbc.com) 133
Music piracy is falling out of favour as streaming services become more widespread, new figures show. From a report: One in 10 people in the UK use illegal downloads, down from 18% in 2013, according to YouGov's Music Report. The trend looks set to continue -- with 22% of those who get their music illegitimately saying they do not expect to be doing so in five years. "It is now easier to stream music than to pirate it," said one survey participant. Another respondent said: "Spotify has everything from new releases to old songs, it filled the vacuum, there was no longer a need for using unverified sources."
No shit. (Score:5, Insightful)
No news here. We've known this at least ever since Steve jobs pointed out that the biggest competition to digital music isn't other outlets but digital "piracy". iTunes was the first viable option that showed you could do it better. And they did make a huge step forward.
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The only time I pirate is when I either can't find something legally at all, or if getting it legally is obnoxiously difficult or expensive (like when I wanted to watch Game of Thrones back in Season 1 and my only option at the time was to get a cable subscription so I could get an HBO subscription so I could watch this episode).
It's a pain in the ass to do in and of itself; I'd much rather just pay another $5 a month or whatever to get access to another large library of content that I can stream whenever.
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Exactly. I've posted about this in the past [slashdot.org]
Gee, give customers a LEGAL way to purchase old media and they are surprised people WANT to buy? Why the fuck isn't EVERYTHING (TV, Movies, 8-bit and 16-bit Games) already digitized already where we CAN purchase them? Hell, wasn't there just a story [slashdot.org] where the classic NES outsold the PS4, XBone, and Switch?
Keep renting! (Score:1, Insightful)
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Most people don't want to "own" movies. The watch them, then they really don't need to see them for years. That's why cable,TV, and Netflix works as a model.
For many people music is the same way. How many times are you really going to listen to that same song?
Re:Keep renting! (Score:5, Insightful)
How many times are you really going to listen to that same song?
Just as I've done all my life: as many times as I freaking want to, without worrying about whether I have a network connection and without getting billed for it each and every time, thanks very much.
Re:Keep renting! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah! I bought one Milli Vanilli gramaphone record back in the 90's and I've been listening to it ever since,
You and me, Zontar, WE are the REAL cool kids!
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Maybe you like $media_corp tracking which songs you listen to, and how many times.
Or perhaps you'd like some government deciding that because you've streamed some song or other—hm, I dunno, how about this one? [youtube.com]—one too many times that you should be on a watchlist.
Neither of those possibilities appeals to me very much.
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Maybe you like $media_corp tracking which songs you listen to, and how many times.
I don't mind it. Why would I care?
Or perhaps you'd like some government deciding that because you've streamed some song or other—hm, I dunno, how about this one? [youtube.com]—one too many times that you should be on a watchlist.
Whatever you do, don't link the source! The government must be really bogged down tracking the 1 million people that have viewed that video.
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Or perhaps you'd like some government deciding that because you've streamed some song or other—hm, I dunno, how about this one? [youtube.com]—one too many times that you should be on a watchlist.
There's a Rick Astley watchlist?
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It's a good thing everyone has the same wants and need isn't it. We all think the exact same as you.
Drones indeed.
Ironically, I actually fall into your boat and buy a lot of the music / movies I like since I tend to listen to them a lot. I also like to find new bands that might not be on the larger distribution labels, and not having easy access to the latest stuff from the major labels encourages me to listen to sources I might otherwise have skipped.
That said, there are plenty of times I've thought that
Re:Keep renting! (Score:5, Interesting)
How many times are you really going to listen to that same song?
Just as I've done all my life: as many times as I freaking want to, without worrying about whether I have a network connection and without getting billed for it each and every time, thanks very much.
Meh. If I want to listen to a song without a network connection, I just hit "download", and then it's on my device. Actually what I really do is hit the "Thumbs up" button, and I have the auto-generated thumbs up playlist set to download. So if I get a new phone, I just have to hit "download" on the thumbs up playlist and pretty soon I have my whole collection available for offline listening with almost zero effort.
I don't get billed for each time I listen to a song. I pay a flat monthly fee, for which I have access to basically all published music. Whatever I want to listen to, I can. If it's not already downloaded I'll have to have a network connection, but I nearly always do.
I used to say that subscription music services were stupid and swear that I would never use such a thing. Then I tried it, and now I can't imagine ever going back to buying albums. It's not just the convenience, it's the freedom to listen to absolutely anything I want to, even something I haven't bought because I'd never heard of it until two seconds ago. If I'm walking around and hear bit of a song I like, I can listen to the whole thing, or the whole album, or the artist's entire discography. Streamed or downloaded, my choice.
Subscription music is awesome. Yeah, I have to pay every month, but I end up spending roughly the same amount of money on music as when I was buying a few albums a year. And I get so much more music, so much more conveniently.
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Just as I've done all my life: as many times as I freaking want to, without worrying about whether I have a network connection and without getting billed for it each and every time, thanks very much.
If you are trying to assert that you have more freedom to listen to music that you've bought on a CD or ripped or something that's of course false. If you are a hoarder though I can see the attraction of having a bunch of CDs piled up on a bookcase.
The times when people are out of network coverage are offset by the requirement to load bits onto a music player of some sort and the obvious capacity limitations of said devices. Regardless the music service I use has offline downloads. I suspect they all do.
The
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So for the price of one CD I (and all my family) get access to what is essentially all CDs, ever.
Plus the price of upgrading your cellular service from a pay-as-you-go plan with few minutes and no data to a data plan with a big enough usage quota.
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Plus the price of upgrading your cellular service from a pay-as-you-go plan with few minutes and no data to a data plan with a big enough usage quota.
Or, you can tag anything including full albums as "keep offline" when you are at home on wifi. If this helps you, think of it like your iPod from 1997. Except you have access to an unlimited catalog, you don't need to go to your computer and fart around with ripping CDs, don't need iTunes, and don't have to manage gigabytes of ripped audio files.
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It's much more freedom to simply never have to worry about fussing with setting things to be available offline track by track or for some time period.
You are right. If you already have every song you'll ever want to listen to loaded on a SD card that's already inserted in your phone, streaming isn't worth it for you.
Somehow seems relevant (Score:1)
Never going to Give You Up!
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Movies are one thing. They are an investment in the time you need to spend to actually enjoy them, and you watch them for the story - a story it is easy to remember.
Music, on the other hand, is something you listen to while doing other things and you can stop in the middle of a track without feeling like you've just wasted your time by not getting to the end. Also, people like to sing along to songs they know which gives music a lot more replay value than a movie.
How to enjoy (Score:3)
Movies are one thing. They are an investment in the time you need to spend to actually enjoy them, and you watch them for the story - a story it is easy to remember.
All entertainment is an investment of your time. If you choose to multitask while enjoying some media then that's fine but you still are spending time on it no matter what the form of entertainment is.
Music, on the other hand, is something you listen to while doing other thing
Maybe YOU listen to it that way but I do not. When I listen to music I really listen to it. Having it just playing as background noise I find to be terribly distracting and irritating. I'm not saying you are wrong to listen to it however you prefer but don't presume that your preferences are universal.
you can stop in the middle of a track without feeling like you've just wasted your time by not getting to the end.
I do
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Linux is a many spendored thing.
Linux lifts us up where we belong.
All you need is Linux.
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Linux is just a game.
I was made for linuxing you baby, you were made for linuxing me...
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Amazon Music will sell me REAL, GENUINE mp3 files that I can download and put onto all of my devices and my home server. I can then listen anywhere, any time, without a network connection. Whether it's phone, PC or Pixelbook.
I can buy a DVD and rip it at glacially slow speed into a very decent file that looks fine on a 60 " TV.
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So, you're a criminal, eh?
I used to be a criminal too. Then I decided to stop breaking that law.
Yet, still I'm a criminal! Dammit. Oh well, at least the people who bribed my government to define me as a criminal, don't get paid anymore.
Have you considered switching to my version of criminality? It's a hell of a lot more ethical, because you deny power to evil (the movie & TV industry, where they made it illegal to play their products), and you also get to keep that power an
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Yet, still I'm a criminal! Dammit.
Nothing is really a crime if you rationalize it in your own little mind.
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Being a hoarder does not make you better than the people who use these services. Licensing media on a plastic disc isn't even really ownership.
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Spotify is $10 a month for unlimited music
average music album is $10
I'll take spotify if i want to listen to new music and not be like old people who listen to the same old stuff
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Re:Keep renting! (Score:5, Insightful)
But it's not all crap. Yes, most the pop music is crap but when was that not the case? There are music gems of all genres for all times; including now.
I found that when I was buying music I was spending more money and listening to less "new" stuff, e.g. music I had not heard before. For example in the last couple weeks I discovered Green Day's When September Ends, came out in 2005 but because I was limiting myself to what I had in my library I didn't fall in love with that song until now. By using a streaming service I'm able to introduce myself to more music without having to buy it, yet I know/assume that the artists that I listen to frequently get paid more then those that I listen to only a couple times.
If you want to buy all your music that's fine. All that really matters to me is that the content creators get paid for what they produce. But there are valid reasons to prefer streaming over purchasing.
Re: Keep renting! (Score:2, Insightful)
This. You can still own the music you want to own. But now you can also listen to and discover a shit ton of different stuff without having to pay thousands of dollars a year... or, you know. Pirating.
Sturgeon's law still applies (Score:1)
But now you can also listen to and discover a shit ton of different stuff without having to pay thousands of dollars a year... or, you know.
Wow, what a deal. I can listen to "shit tons of different stuff", most of which I'm almost guaranteed to not enjoy, and pay for the privilege. Maybe you enjoy wasting your time listening to (mostly) crappy music but I've got better things to do so I'll let people like you who don't value their time wade through the drek for me. Having access to a lot of crap doesn't mean that it still isn't crap. You evidently aren't familiar with Sturgeon's Law [wikipedia.org].
Re: Sturgeon's law still applies (Score:1)
Hmm, so Spotify has over 30 million songs... 90% of everything is crap... so that means you get access to over 3 million non-crap songs for under $10 a month? Wow, you either gotta be really poor, or just really love hearing the same songs over and over on the radio courtesy of ClearChannel, to pass up on that deal!
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Think of the value of research. Nobody can do it for you. If you don't do it, then you will miss all the good music.
Every piece of music that you think isn't crappy, you heard for the first time, somehow. How did that happen?
Whatever your strategy of old, you can implement it even better, faster, cheaper, and with wider scope in 2018 than you could in 1988. It's not that anyone disagrees with Sturgeon's Law, it's that people find ways to
$10/month for mostly crap (Score:2)
I'll take spotify if i want to listen to new music and not be like old people who listen to the same old stuff
I don't buy music unless it's something I will want to listen to again. Personally I don't really find much enjoyment in listening to a bunch of crap hoping to find a gem among the turds so Spotify is approximately useless to me. I'll happily pay $10 for something I know I like and can enjoy multiple times over $10 for a bunch of stuff I mostly will not like every time. Maybe you just aren't very discerning in what you spend your time listening to?
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I'll happily pay $10 for something I know I like and can enjoy multiple times over $10 for a bunch of stuff I mostly will not like every time.
You do realize that a streaming service gives you access to the music you like now, new music as it's released, and music from the past that you don't know exists but might like if you heard it.
"Sir, you can have the steak for $29.99, or steak and lobster for the same price."
"Give me 1/2 of the steak."
Rent vs buy (Score:2)
You do realize that a streaming service gives you access to the music you like now
No it lets me rent access to it as long as I pay $10/month in perpetuity so long as I have an active internet connection. No thanks. If that works for you great but it isn't a good value for money to me. If I like a piece of music I'll get it in a format I can listen to whenever I want, without internet access required, and without further transactions required. If this costs a bit more per unit I'm ok with that.
new music as it's released
You hugely overestimate how much that matters to me.
and music from the past that you don't know exists but might like if you heard it.
If I run across it great but I have yet
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Maybe you need to try a modern streaming service. Sounds like you tried Pandora in 2001 and gave up.
No it lets me rent access to it as long as I pay $10/month in perpetuity
You are right. If you never plan to pay for new music again in your life, it's a better to deal buy that 1 CD and listen to it over and over. For people that are actively listening to new music streaming saves them money.
so long as I have an active internet connection.
You understand that's not true right? Streaming services allow you to mark things to keep offline. Yes, you do need an internet connection at some point to download the music to your device.
Needle in the haystack (Score:2)
Maybe you need to try a modern streaming service. Sounds like you tried Pandora in 2001 and gave up.
I have tried them from time to time just to see what is out there. In fairness I'm not a big music listener so I'm definitely not the target demographic for a lot of these services. When I listen to things it tends to be more podcasts, comedy and occasionally talk radio like NPR. I like music now and then but I'm bored or annoyed by most of it. Plus I'm a very active listener so when I listen to music I really like to listen to it like I'm sitting in a concert. I like to focus on what I'm actively doin
Re:Keep renting! (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, digital music is a rare place of relative sanity in the realm of digital entertainment, where *if* you do actually choose to 'buy' a song, odds are it is drm free and not outrageously expensive.
Movies and books have download editions that are frequently *more* expensive than getting a physical copy of the same data, and are encumbered by drm on top of that.
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If I'm paying $10 a month and can consume 2-3 "things" that I'm not going to use more than once. And buying them in a store would cost me $30, and finding a copy by searching would take me 1-2 weeks, then yes, renting is the more sensible option.
Re:Keep renting! (Score:5, Insightful)
IMO, ownership isn't the answer to everything. When I was a kid, I could scrape together the $8 or $9 bucks to buy an album (this was a long time ago, obv.) maybe six times a year. Off to the record store. Hours spent looking at the covers of hundreds of records, hoping to God I could figure out which one was worth my paltry allowance simply by looking at the cover art. Album purchased. Go home, listen to ten songs until the needle wears a hole in the record, or, just as likely, regret that I just bought an album I didn't like very much.
Today, I pay $15 a month (in today's money) for a family Spotify account. Me, my wife, and my two kids probably listen to at least a hundred bucks worth of new albums (in 1984 dollars) each month. I can go back and sample a half dozen albums from an artist I like without having to shell out only to discover that I've wasted my money. I can introduce my kids to entire genres without breaking the bank. My daughter can hear six versions of the piano piece she's studying. That's not mere convenience. It's musical wealth, for cheap.
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This. Unless your musical taste is extremely limited, a $10/month subscription is actually a LOT cheaper than buying all the records/CD's you want to listen to.
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in addition to all of your personal information.
Is it?
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Re: Keep renting! (Score:2)
There are security cameras at Walmart, better avoid that too!
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My family does the exact same thing with YouTube at no additional cost beyond our monthly ISP bill.
Privacy (Score:2)
A long, long time ago, Slashdot posters used to care about privacy. Now, privacy isn't even a consideration, so long as you can get your stuff for "cheap". I hope it's worth it to y'all.
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This is ridiculous. Privacy is not the opposite of having a Spotify account. You wouldn't give up any more if you bought a CD from a store with a credit card.
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A. I use cash, as should everybody who doesn't want to give 3% of their income to Visa/Mastercard.
B. Bullshit. https://www.spotify.com/us/leg... [spotify.com]
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Ok, I guess if you're the Unabomber you've got a point.
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Yes, only crazy people want to not have a company monitor everything they do. You're right.
Re:Keep renting! (Score:4, Insightful)
You can still buy the albums. This is just another choice.
For someone like me who is musically clueless, this is a great service. No commercials and I don't have to know what I like beforehand.
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People think that there are only two choices. Either pay for legal distribution of licensed media, or fight the man by illegally downloading.
Both of those are the same choice. You choose to live within the boundaries set for you by your corporate masters and government overlords. You aren't fighting anything by illegally downloading the content you want. You're just hoping your masters and overlords are too busy counting everyone else's money to come after you.
When you actually start fighting the man yo
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Keep renting, good little Spotify/Google/Amazon drones! Keep renting! You must contribute to the Mothership's recurring revenue! Ownership is bad. Renting is good! Convenience is more valuable than anything!
To each their own.
I could scour used music stores and get used CDs and rip them and store and organize them and back them all up offsite and ... they'd be mine all mine my precious.
Or I can pay a small fee and not worry about any of that. I choose the later. You can choose whatever works best for you.
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Agreed, but it's so much more than a "small fee" you're paying. You're also giving up 100% of your personal information.
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I have basically three choices.
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Ehh
Usually I'm not a huge fan of lease/lend but in the case of music and movies? It's WAY easier than trying to actually keep copies of everything.
My problem is actually finding ONE place to get all my movie needs met. The 'exclusive content' crap is exhausting and leads me full circle back to one single source which I won't name.
No thanks. (Score:1, Insightful)
I'll stick to Pirate Bay.
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Honest question: hypothetically, if Pirate Bay and all other free file sharing options didn't exist, would you buy music, or would you just not have a music collection at all?
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It's the right way to look at it, because I was challenging the assertion of the AC OP. The music industry argues that every pirated track is a lost sale, while piracy proponents such as the OP like to argue that piracy is the only way and f*** the industry, etc. Like so many things, I think that the truth is somewhere in the middle, for all the reasons you state.
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We're also, I presume, assuming that the streaming services don't exist? Because I'm pretty much okay with Spotify's free service. (I used to use the paid service but I stopped commuting as much and decided it wasn't worth it for the reduced usage.)
If spotify and pirating were both non-viable I'd be listening to the radio, so I guess it would be "not have a music collection".
Re: No thanks. (Score:2)
The only way for The Pirate Bay to not exist is if there was no media worth having.
And even then I am sure people pirate Nickelback, so...
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Wow (Score:2)
It's almost as if you make it easy to buy/use something legally, people will be more likely to use it.
That said, every few years, I check to see if I can buy my favourite J/KPop tunes...nope, they don't want to sell them to me. I guess I'll keep ripping them from Youtube then.
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That is the argument people use to keep certain drugs illegal.
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Understanding the consumer-- Pros and Cons (Score:5, Interesting)
Today, more than ever, there are tools to understand the user, and their desires, in alarmingly graphic detail.
This is both good, and bad, from both ends of the producer-consumer spectrum.
From the producer side, it utterly DESTROYS deeply cherished misconceptions about what the consumer actually wants, or what drives their purchases (and their lack of purchases.) For example, the time-honored canard of "Pirates just want artists to work for nothing!" and pals. No-- research has shown, REPEATEDLY that this is not the case. The pirate just does not want to deal with the obstructions of your distribution model.
From the consumer side, the analytics tools are seen as highly invasive, and downright creepy, even though they leverage public datasets, and group behavior models, rather than specific data in many circumstances.
But, like it or not, there is no denying the power of data driven marketing and service providence.
As was pointed out when Netflix hit the scene, Netflix alone did more to eliminate movie piracy than any hairbrained scheme created by the RIAA and its constellation of associate organizations ever did, using any of their technological "solutions" at that time. The reason was because access was greatly increased, cost was very affordable, and (at the time) anything you could not stream, you could rent by mail with little personal financial risk if you failed to return the disc.
Naturally, the response of the media industry was "Kill Netflix!", which they have been attempting to do ever since.
The simple truth of "Pirates are customers who wont put up with your obstructionist bullshit, but are perfectly OK with paying for a-la-carte for bulk anytime access, and overall, consume more media then their peers, and will make more aggregate purchases." is readily apparent, and has appeared every time this kind of thing is 'tested' in the market; Every time it has been shown that when this is done, piracy dries up to a tiny fraction of prior incidence rates, with a strong coordinating relation to convenience+pricepoint.
The elephant in the room, is that the 'desire' to force consumers into deals they do not wish to participate in (eg, via region restriction lockouts, DRM, and a host of other bullshit--- to generate artificial scarcity, to drive up unit prices artificially above what the consumer genuinely wishes to spend by exploitation of a monopoly status-- eg, such as via copyright) is stronger than their desire to actually make money.
In this era, we understand the consumer to an alarming degree.
The producers should use the same data driven mechanisms to scrutinize THEMSELVES, and let go of these tired and moth eaten ideas. I suspect that they are afraid of what they will find, given how intently they have been at ignoring what their consumer marketing research has shown them for the past 2 and a half decades, as it relates to piracy.
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I am not discounting the latter-- I specifically mentioned it as the elephant in the room--- The former is simply not true. The data shows that they get more money with the lower price point, and more customers which they drag away from piracy by making piracy less appealing, due to the pirates making more ancillary purchases through better access.
They will make MORE money by attracting customers with better offerings than they will by being balls-trippin power hungry douche canoes.
They just THINK they wi
There is another reason (Score:1, Interesting)
Tired old argument (Score:3)
99% of the new music today is garbage.
They've been saying that for longer than you've been alive and they'll be saying it long after you are dead. Cute that you think you have some sort of revelation there. My grandparents thought my parent's favorite music was utter drek too and your kids will think your music sucks. A lot of it is crap of course but the funny thing is that we can't quite agree on exactly which bits are the crap.
We have a 100% blues/jazz low power station privately funded, with ZERO commercials that I listen to 99% of the time any more.
So you have very specific tastes and think anything else must be crap. Not true of course just like it wasn't tr
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Well, I'm starting to wonder about that. My evidence is only anecdotal, but I keep finding it everywhere. My step son (19) and his friends seem to spend far more time mining older music than listening to new stuff. They're more likely to sit around listening to Led Leppelin albums than anything current. If I walk into a music (instrument) store, I'm almost 100% sure to find some kid sitting there picking out Hotel California, and some other kid trying out an overdrive pedal by mashing out a bunch of AC/DC r
Sampling bias (Score:2)
My step son (19) and his friends seem to spend far more time mining older music than listening to new stuff.
That's probably because the catalog of "old" stuff is a lot larger than the new stuff, plus it has already been curated for the good stuff. It's pretty easy to find a Best Of album for some awesome musicians of decades (or centuries) past. Hunting for new hits is always a tedious process and requires a high tolerance for listening to a lot of crap. Kids today have the advantage of having easy access to vast catalogs of good music that simply weren't available for reasonable amounts of money when we were
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How much of the drop is due to prosecutions? (Score:2)
I'm sure, some of the drop really is due to legitimate alternatives appearing. Yet, those alternatives still cost some money, so the criminal [slashdot.org] and civil prosecutions of the illegal downloaders [theguardian.com] and download-facilitators [nytimes.com] must've helped too.
How much of the observed drop is due to those, law-based measures?
And, if these measures' really did prove a significant deterrent, thus contributing to what we now seem to agree is a good thing, maybe, Slashdot ought to co
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You must either come from a very populous clan, or be an incredibly social person. Because I can't claim to know, from where more than 12 people get their digital entertainment, and what factors affect their choices. I do know for sure, that 3 of those 12 people are concerned about possible run-ins with the copyright-owners (or their representatives)...
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The aggressive legal pursuit of the pirates only appeared recently as well. I think, we can count that era from the Napster drama [slashdot.org] (when Slashdot advocated "shutting down" the musicians, rather than those, who pirated their works).
It is not "clear" at all, indeed, I think the opposite is "clear". As I said, I have evidence among my own friends. However anec
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I'm sure, some of the drop really is due to legitimate alternatives appearing. Yet, those alternatives still cost some money, so the criminal [slashdot.org] and civil prosecutions of the illegal downloaders [theguardian.com] and download-facilitators [nytimes.com] must've helped too.
Must it? Do you have evidence?
How much of the observed drop is due to those, law-based measures?
An excellent question. Do you have an answer? Since the next question kind of depends on the answer to this one.
The real reasons - Convenience and cheaper pricing (Score:1)
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That's one school of thought, but... (Score:4, Funny)
I think this is highly controversial. Sure, there's one school of thought that says if customers wave their money in your face, you should take it. But there's another that says at the first sight of a customer's money, you should angrily shout "get away, you piece of shit!" and then and spit in their direction, in order to maximize profits. This latter point of view is very popular and especially in the entertainment industry, but I think it doesn't get explained well enough in economics classes. Our society needs to do better.
no kidding (Score:2)
thanks to downloading (Score:2)
This would not (or at least not for many years into the future) have occurred without "illegal" downloading.
Without the proof that it wouldn't break the internet, they'd have stuck by the mantra that the internet couldn't handle it.
Without the proof of the market, they'd have stuck by the mantra that the market wasn't there.
Without the competition, they would have priced it out of reach.
If the competition of "illegal" downloading were to disappear today, streaming would price itself out of reach and start d
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