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Music Piracy Entertainment

More Than One Third of Music Consumers Still Pirate Music (theguardian.com) 167

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
More than one-third of global music listeners are still pirating music, according to a new report by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). From a report: While the massive rise in legal streaming platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal was thought to have stemmed illegal consumption, 38% of listeners continue to acquire music through illegal means. The most popular form of copyright infringement is stream-ripping (32%): using easily available software to record the audio from sites like YouTube at a low-quality bit rate. Downloads through "cyberlocker" file hosting services or P2P software like BitTorrent came second (23%), with acquisition via search engines in third place (17%).
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More Than One Third of Music Consumers Still Pirate Music More

More Than One Third of Music Consumers Still Pirate Music

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  • Does someone still believe their research? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by NuclearCat ( 899738 ) on Wednesday October 10, 2018 @01:27PM (#57456588) Journal
    Because it is extremely beneficial for them to put the situation in such a way , so it is easier to introduce new taxes, new draconian measures to restrict the rights to backup copies, to limit the ways of reproduction and etc.
    Their greed has no limits

    • Re:Does someone still believe their research? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by commodore64_love ( 1445365 ) on Wednesday October 10, 2018 @01:58PM (#57456786) Journal

      Beat me to it. I was just about to post "Sounds like Made-up Statistics". I used to download music from piratebay, but not anymore. I get a ton of song in my Amazon Prime account, and if the song is not there, it's available from Youtube or Vimeo or some other legitimate source.

      > The most popular form of copyright infringement is stream-ripping (32%)... from sites like YouTube at a low-quality bit rate.

      So basically the modern version of Cassette-recording off the radio. Even if the stream-ripping was blocked, these people have NO intention of buying the music legally. Claiming these customers as "lost sales" is ridiculous. (Especially since many of them are children or teens with no money.)

      .

      • That's what I always laughed at with these industry people, claiming it's lost revenue. Especially with now crappy music/movies are now adays, it's a gamble if it's going to be worth buying. Newest movie on BluRay runs about $30 (Canadian) that's a bit gamble on a movie. Or $25 for a non pop star cd (again, gamble if it's a worthy cd). I've personally bought movies I've watched 100 times, because I've watched them 100 times. Same with cds I've listened to 100 times. If it came down to having to buy a movie

        • If it came down to having to buy a movie @30 or cd @25 to see if I'll like it,

          That's an interesting anecdote but, believe it or not there was a time when the internet didn't exist and you couldn't download movies or music to try them out. Yet, people still bought movies and music. They bought *more* movies and music than they do today.

          The time of quality things being produced, is gone.

          Common reality distortion. The way it works is that you remember the quality media you consumed when you were younger. It sticks with you, because... it's good. That gives you the impression there was less shit at that time. It's not true. The majority

          • That's an interesting anecdote but, believe it or not there was a time when the internet didn't exist and you couldn't download movies or music to try them out. Yet, people still bought movies and music. They bought *more* movies and music than they do today.

            Yes, because they didn't have any other choice.

            Now they do, and the game has changed.

          • 40 years ago there was no rap polluting every bit of popular culture it touches.

            • 40 years ago there was no rap polluting every bit of popular culture it touches.

              IKR? And 70 years ago, there was no rock and roll polluting every bit of popular culture it touches. And 120 years ago, there was no jazz polluting every bit of popular culture it touches.

              See any pattern there?

          • I simply don't understand people who say there isn't any good music today. A music fan can spend an eternity on YouTube, just don't start your search with Quavo's B U B B L E G U M.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by Gr8Apes ( 679165 )
              I still find it difficult to find new quality music. Pandora essentially plays stuff I already own no matter what I drop into the seed, even something from the last year or two. YouTube, after a quick review, references things I can hear on any of the commercial radio stations. Nothing new there either. Maybe it's true, less good music is being made today. Good is subjective, obviously, but if you cut out all the Sheeran/Mendez/Katy Perry pop crap and a whole bunch of wanna be sorta rap thugs, there's reall

              • The "good" part is very subjective. I find myself far more short of time than of music these days. Generally I hear something I like on WXPN, which I have on in my car. In the course of exploring that music on YouTube, I inevitably run across other artists. Not just from YouTube's algorithms, but also from the comments - which I read through as the song play. As the music plays, I read up about the artist on Wikipedia or the various music websites, and that provides even more leads as I search for bandmates

                • Re: (Score:1)

                  by Gr8Apes ( 679165 )

                  The "good" part is very subjective....And yeah, sometimes (often, actually) the journey leads to something I hadn't heard of from the 60s or 70s - but just as often I end up at something pretty modern. I don't know what types of music you like, but for my decidedly rock-centered preferences, I'm like a kid in a candy store.

                  I prefer post-modern, new wave, alternative, alternative rock, or whatever today's moniker of what essentially is a mostly non-mainstream line of music that caters more to musicality than whatever the teen masses deem good today. You can couple that with real country (not the rock/pop rip-off of today's "country" - but that genre is pretty much dead) old school rap (also dead) and definitely various flavors of hard rock and and even some metal and perhaps a couple of pop songs, and you have my mix. Perhaps

                  • There's never been a shortage of dreck - and the dreck is of course also helped out by the ease of publishing today. If you go to the thrift store and leaf through their LPs, there's almost nothing good left in the pile unless it is fresh.

                    Yeah, if your genre is dying, there's not much to be done about that. I don't know anything about old-school country. If you are looking for 90s-era rap there is Killer Mike off the top of my head. I haven't really been on the lookout for even older Sugarhill Gang type stu

                    • Re: (Score:1)

                      by Gr8Apes ( 679165 )

                      There's never been a shortage of dreck

                      True, but I don't think there's ever been so much dreck at the top of the charts. I mean, 11 entries for Sheeran in the top 40? At once? From a single album? While Sheeran isn't completely talentless compared to, say, oh, pretty much the rest of the top 40.... but he's no Elvis, Johnny Cash, Elton John, David Bowie, Janis Joplin, Garth Brooks or even Cher, for goodness sake. And none of them had half that many in the top 40 at once from what I can recall. (Ok, Sheeran might be equivalent to Cher)

                      Yeah, if your genre is dying, there's not much to be done about that. I don't know anything about old-school country. If you are looking for 90s-era rap there is Killer Mike off the top of my head. I haven't really been on the lookout for even older Sugarhill Gang type stuff so I have to plead ignorance there. "Alternative" is probably my main focus, whatever that means. Most recent likes include Milky Chance, War On Drugs, The Lumineers, Regina Spektor, Delta Spirit, and St. Vincent.

                      Old school

      • Beat me to it. I was just about to post "Sounds like Made-up Statistics". I used to download music from piratebay, but not anymore. I get a ton of song in my Amazon Prime account, and if the song is not there, it's available from Youtube or Vimeo or some other legitimate source.

        > The most popular form of copyright infringement is stream-ripping (32%)... from sites like YouTube at a low-quality bit rate.

        So basically the modern version of Cassette-recording off the radio. Even if the stream-ripping was blocked, these people have NO intention of buying the music legally. Claiming these customers as "lost sales" is ridiculous. (Especially since many of them are children or teens with no money.)

        .

        And for many, a lot of this piracy is merely retroactive backups of stuff they had legally acquired years ago anyway, and can't be arsed to do the digitizing themselves. Whatever.

      • What's funny is the number of musicians over the years who got their start by trading casettes/samples/remixes. So on one hand, there's a little bit of *POTENTIALLY* lost revenue from that piracy, but it's absolutely dwarfed by the infusion of new blood into the industry that only exists because of the eeeebil piracy.

        Same thing with FOSS; by allowing people to enhance and extend existing stuff, or pivot off of ideas found elsewhere, the industry and society at large are enriched.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Kiralan ( 765796 )
        And how, exactly, do they come up with 'stream-ripping YouTube' as most pppular? Do they have a magic way to tell you are streaming it to a file, rather than just listening to it?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          They could probably detect ripping if they wanted to. I use an app called 4k Video Downloader to rip videos and audio from YouTube. By default it opens 3 HTTPS streams, but I configured it for 5 to speed it up. Rips at maximum speed, usually many times playback speed.

      • Even if the stream-ripping was blocked, these people have NO intention of buying the music legally.

        Nobody is arguing that every single one of those people would have purchased the music. But seems like a big fat stretch to say that unlimited access to something for free doesn't affect someone's desire top spend money on it. It's just dishonest to make this claim to such an extreme.

        Especially since many of them are children or teens with no money.

        Teens and children have parents, friends, and relatives. They birthdays and Christmases.

        • Wow you had a generous upbringing. My parents always said "no" to me. Basically I got 2 CDs a year: 1 from my parents; 1 from my brother. The end.

    • The way I understand TFS, if you pay for Deezer, Spotify and Google Play Music and buy dozens of CDs each year, but ripped a single MP3 from Youtube, you are part of the 38% of pirates.

      Also, does it makes you a pirate if you listen to a Youtube music video with your monitor off? If you use an ad-blocker?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Calydor ( 739835 )

        It's yet another case of "Lies, Big Lies, and Statistics".

        • As a statistician I'm offended by that. (It's "Lies, damned lies and Statistics" by the way). Statistics can't lie, they can be incorrect but not lies. People lie with statistics, they miss label, miss attribute, say that the statics show something it doesn't etc. But stats, if calculated properly can only describe the data.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Calydor ( 739835 )

            I think the point is being very selective with the data you use - which is incidentally also the hallmark of a believable lie. Stick to the truth as much as possible - just don't tell the whole truth.

  • In other news (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Wednesday October 10, 2018 @01:29PM (#57456614)
    only 1/3 of music consumers still pirate music. Also, no $h!t Sherlock. Broke kids are always going to pirate. Let them. It gets them in the habit of listening to music when they're young. Without piracy they're going to grow up without it and not care when they're old enough to pay. That's how Metallica got their start; pirated mix tapes. Without them they'd be working at 7-11.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The industry doesn't actually want piracy to stop.

      They want control over your hardware, and they use piracy as an excuse to get it.

      They also want free tax money funneled there way.

      Lastly, they want to be able to indiscriminately sue people for amounts of money that leave them impoverished for life. It's a long-lasting income stream that way.

    • Re:In other news (Score:4)

      by commodore64_love ( 1445365 ) on Wednesday October 10, 2018 @02:17PM (#57456912) Journal

      Also: A lot of people will buy "Greatest Hits" compilations of music they heard when they were children and teens.... mainly for nostalgia (or because they think current music sucks). IOW the record companies lose money today on pirating kids, but they make it up later, when they sell these adults old hits from 20-30 years ago.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mckwant ( 65143 )

        Don't forget the tour: https://www.nkotb.com/news/tit... [nkotb.com]

        Pure hell. NKOTB, Salt n' Pepa, Debbie Gibson, Naughty By Nature, and @#%#ing Tiffany, whose entire set probably consists of the one craptastic semi-hit she had THIRTY-ONE years ago. AND it was a cover. AND they're playing basketball stadia.

        I'll defend music until I die. The industry surrounding it can go blow a goat.

        • I just looked-up Tiffany. She actually had four top 10 hits. Two were remakes, and two were originals, though none of them were written by her. (In contrast Debbie Gibson was discovered at a mall, singing self-written songs.)

          I don't think I would go see any of those groups. I liked NKOTB, Naughty by Nature, etc when I was a teen, but the music has not aged well. (And neither have they.)

    • Totally true. I'm 65 now and when I recall taping music from the radio... onto reel-to-reel tape originally and then onto cassettes once they appeared. Hell, the music industry survived that "piracy" so I'm sure they'll survive a little stream-ripping.

  • >> More Than One Third of Music Consumers Still Pirate Music

    Is this number this low because the other two thirds still don't know how to pirate music? Or are there still people who know how to pirate but still plug their holy ears should any not-properly-thithed music hit their virgin eardrums?

    • Re:Why so low? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Comboman ( 895500 ) on Wednesday October 10, 2018 @01:40PM (#57456664)
      Or new music is crap and I already ripped/pirated everything I'll ever want to listen to decades ago.

      • Or new music is crap and I already ripped/pirated everything I'll ever want to listen to decades ago.

        There is great music still being made. I find new good stuff all the time, it just takes some work. IMO, the de-valuation of recorded music due to piracy and streaming has forced bands to make money the old fashioned way ... live performances. There are some really talented musicians out there honing their craft and putting on great shows while cranking out great recordings.

      • Or new music is crap and I already ripped/pirated everything I'll ever want to listen to decades ago.

        UNTIL your hard drive dies, like mine just did. Brother, can you spare a MP3?

    • Re:Why so low? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Wednesday October 10, 2018 @01:45PM (#57456690)
      I generally don't bother to pirate most media anymore. I'm perfectly fine with paying for it, especially if I get a DRM-free digital copy or I get access to a streaming service that doesn't include any commercials. If you make it easy for consumers to pay for what they want (i.e. don't insist on bundling content with things I don't want) most people are more than willing to pay.

      As you get older, your time becomes more valuable and you have a higher income. Paying $5 on Amazon or Apple, or $10 a month for Netflix is ultimately less expensive than trying to a functional pirated stream somewhere else online or dredging through seedy websites to find warez that isn't a malware-infested mess.

    • > but still plug their holy ears should any not-properly-purchased music hit their virgin eardrums?

      Your comment reminded me: I get into Las Vegas nightclubs for free, and hear the current hit music for free, since I don't spend any money. Would the music executives/producers consider this a form of piracy too? (I bet the greedy bastards do.)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AntEater ( 16627 )

      I listen to a ton of non-mainstream music and am able to purchase from sources where a good portion of the payment actually goes to the artist (bandcamp, for one). I happen to like supporting the musicians I listen to. I also want non-lossy media whether that's a physical CD or flac. As for the rest, I buy used CDs whenever possible.

      In addition, some of us don't want to deal with remote chance that an illegal download brings on a world of lawyer lawyer fee pain on ourselves.

    • The rest of us can afford to buy it and/or have better morals. =P

      The same thing W.R.T. computer games. Almost everyone pirated them when they were young -- but when they grew up and had a job they wanted to financially support the developers so that they could continue to make more games.

      It's not really rocket science. The (non mutually exclusive) categories WHY people pirate are:

      [ ] Can't afford it
      [ ] Content is not legally available
      [ ] I'm sticking it to "The man"
      [ ] It's free, man!
      [ ] Yes, I can afford

      • 3,6,7.

      • Well I think of it as a recording right. Can I hear it for free somewhere I can legally record what I'm hearing? Does it play on the TV or Music channels on my cable subscription? Then there's really no ethical difference whether I download a copy or record it. I can legally record radio. I can legally record my tv. I'm therefore not not doing anything wrong simply because I got the recording from a download instead. Them making me double pay is wrong.

  • Duh (Score:4, Interesting)

    by AvitarX ( 172628 ) <me@brandywinehund r e d .org> on Wednesday October 10, 2018 @01:32PM (#57456630) Journal

    Of course we do.

    I pay $10/month for a service, and side-load what's unavailable.

    Some of the side-loaded stuff isn't available anyway.

  • Without pirated music, the music industry as we know it today wouldn't exist. Piracy, garage recordings, dubbed mixtapes, is how the majority of bands get their name out... Growing up, I first heard everyone from the Greatful Dead to Metallica to Guns N Roses to Sublime via pirated music... and then went on to share those tapes with countless other friends. Piracy is where popularity comes from. I can honestly say I've never seen a band or bought an album from a musician who I didn't first hear through some

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      The big labels don't want new bands to become popular in this way, they want to control which new bands become well known.

  • The most popular form of copyright infringement is stream-ripping (32%) using easily available software to record the audio from sites like YouTube at a low-quality bit rate

    Sounds like a lot of work. I just listen to youtube with an ad blocker. Gives me exactly the same result, and it's not copyright infringement.

    • Let me load YouTube on my cheap clip-on MP3 player... oh wait, that doesn't work.

    • There are plugins for Firefox and Chrome where you just tap "download" and it rips an MP3 to your phone. Then you tap "play random" and you have a couple 100 songs on rotation.

    • Keeping a copy locally though ensures it is available for your listening pleasure after it does suddenly vanish from YouTube.

  • Please take a moment to read this old article: "The plaintiffs (musicians) claimed compensation for use of work listed on what are known in the Canadian recording industry as pending lists. These lists, accumulated over many years, contain works for which no licence was obtained and no compensation paid........ the action could have been worth up to $6-billion."

    In other words the music industry owed 6 billion dollars to musicians for non-payment of songs they used w/o compensation. - LINK https://business.financialpost... [financialpost.com] And the followup: The record industry only paid 50 million of the 6000 million owed to artists: https://entertainment.slashdot... [slashdot.org]

    - The Music Industry wants to scold us commoners, and yet THEY are far worse at screwing the musicians than we are.

    • That's why they keep saying "Stop pirating! Think of our poor artists!"

    • - The Music Industry wants to scold us commoners, and yet THEY are far worse at screwing the musicians than we are.

      Isn't that why you get into playing music in the first place? To get screwed. It just didn't work out as planned...

  • Moving the bar (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MightyYar ( 622222 ) on Wednesday October 10, 2018 @02:11PM (#57456858)

    What kind of fools do they think we are? We've been taping stuff off of the radio since before I was born in the 70s. Now we listen to music through YouTube and "tape" off of that instead. Only in the mind of an IP lawyer is there some kind of moral distinction here. I'll do this until it is technically infeasible to do so, and I'll sleep just fine at night.

  • Yet they still make money hand over fist (Score:3)

    by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Wednesday October 10, 2018 @02:15PM (#57456894) Journal
    They're not in the least hurting for money but of course they have to have all the money. Then when they have everything so locked-down and monopolized they'll just raise the prices on everything, or worse: they'll try to convince everyone that paying every month forever for 'streaming' is somehow better. Yeah well fuck them no wonder people still pirate music.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Human greed is unlimited. The only good news is that being rich does not actually make these people happy, it makes them desperate to be even more rich. Hence they live pretty bad lives.

  • Shifting (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The most popular form of copyright infringement is stream-ripping (32%): using easily available software to record the audio from sites like YouTube at a low-quality bit rate.

    This is also known as Time shifting [wikipedia.org].

    ProTip: The Supreme Court of the United States decided that Time shifting is perfectly legal Fair Use, and does NOT infringe copyright.

  • People pay for music? (Score:3)

    by HornWumpus ( 783565 ) on Wednesday October 10, 2018 @02:23PM (#57456950)

    Pay for music? WTF?

  • ... and their musicians as well. Hence no surprise. They are at fault, not the "pirates".

  • "Phonographic"

    cartel with a mid 20th century mind set

    • I don't agree. The etymology of this word is still perfectly valid.

      • The rest of the world disagrees with you and has a definition for phonograph that is quite precise. They're novelty items now, inferior 20th century mechanical tech.

  • Piracy (Score:5, Informative)

    by darkain ( 749283 ) on Wednesday October 10, 2018 @02:39PM (#57457056) Homepage

    Piracy is easier than dealing with DRM. End of story.

    • Both Amazon and iTunes sell DRM-free music. Where are you buying your .mp3s that they come with DRM?

  • Between Youtube and Pandora, you can hear everything you want for free anyways. Streaming services have already pretty much killed piracy in the classical 1990's sense of the word.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DogDude ( 805747 )
      Streaming sucks. Poor quality. Poor selection.

      • Yet popular. I guess there are many consumers less discerning than you.

      • Streaming sucks. Poor quality. Poor selection.

        Given that many people are ripping streams, then quality and selection of streaming services are clearly not the issue.

      • Well, I don't know about poor selection. My favorite band is prog-era Genesis, and I've found things from them on Youtube that I've never seen anywhere else. Never even heard of before Youtube. I'd never heard of It's Yourself [youtube.com] or Spot the Pigeon [youtube.com], and Youtube introduced me to both.

        Maybe you're on some super-elite mp3 site that gives you access to stuff more rare than this, or higher bitrates or whatever - but I'm pretty impressed with Youtube's catalog.

  • People have their music taste developed between 12 and 18 and they stick to it all their life. To download all that music on broadband you need half an hour and you're good for life.

    So I doubt that third very much.

  • There are lots of ways to find music and actually support the artists.
    I find stuff on youtube, and if I like it I may rip it (to listen in my car). If I really like it, I will support the artist on whatever site they have (e.g. bandcamp.com) I have found quite a lot of good stuff that you will NEVER hear on any of these services that cater to the masses. Check out youtube channels or bandcamp.com, or whatever you can find. And by all means support the artists by buying their stuff.

    It's usually priced ri

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Rearrange those Titanic deckchairs.
  • The music being offered is worth paying for

  • But how much content is pirated? 38% of the listeners might download an occasional song. But if the amount of content being acquired is down in the single digits of total distribution, it's not really a big problem.

  • It may be that the underlying reason is that much of the music produced today is pure shit and not worth paying for.

  • I subscribe to google music and more on more than one occasion I've observed music going missing from my playlists because of contractual agreements / rate disputes between google and the publisher. Google doesn't make any attempt to notify their paying customers of this change to the catalog. When you obtain music thru other means and upload it to google, you never need to worry about it disappearing. Piracy gives me the ability to continue enjoying the music long after it's removed from google.

  • I'm surprised its only 1/3. 10 years ago, before mobile, this would at least be 40-50%, without all the great music apps we have nowadays.

  • ... adjust you're pricing and it will be 100%.
    'Pirating' will always be present until the purchase of the music becomes a reasonable 'risk' for the money and one is allowed to move and replicate the purchase on all one's owned devices.

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