Fewer People Downloading Music Illegally
Source: Tom's Guide | Keywords: Music, Illegal, Download, MP3
Apparently, consumers are downloading less music illegally... unless you’re a teenager.
Recently Entertainment Media Research conducted a survey with 1,500 UK residents and discovered that the number of music fans downloading music illegally actually dropped to 39 percent, a whopping 4 percent difference from last year’s statistics. Three-quarters of those people even admitted that they would cease downloading the files if contacted by their ISPs.
"It is quite evident that an ISP-led strategy has bite because illegal downloaders are fairly convinced that ISPs are currently monitoring their activities and are more likely to act against them than the courts," said Russell Hart, chief executive of EMR.
And he could be right. According to an article on the Telegraph.co.uk, six of Britain’s leading ISPs teamed up with the British Phonographic Industry to identify and contact internet users actually downloading illegal music. The intent is to inform those downloading consumers that their activity is currently being monitored. This route bypasses the court entirely, however the British Government is considering a proposal to force those ISPs to hand over the information without a court order.
That said, it’s hard to imagine anyone openly admitting to downloading music illegally to anyone other than the immediate family, much less a survey. However, teenagers seem to have no problem admitting to their carefree access to illegal music. Roughly 58 percent of the teenagers questioned said they would not pay to download music; that’s quite a jump compared to the 41 percent claiming the same thing in 2006.
There’s no question that music fans feel the heat from companies, ISPs and the government regarding accessing illegal music. However, if there’s any factor that help reduce pirating music, it’s the availability of DRM-free music on retail sites. P2P networks also bring trouble, whether they’re monitored by organizations like the RIAA or littered with nasty viruses. Time Warner Cable even shut down its Newsgroup servers because it was impossible to monitor every file passing through the network. North American ISPs are even threatening to place bandwidth caps, thus reducing the load of files downloaded each month.
But are ISPs actually monitoring their users? That’s a good question, and as long as that thought remains in the minds of its subscribers, illegal downloading of music just may begin to decline. Still, one must we wary of surveys and statistics. After all, who would actually admit to illegal activities?
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OR maybe its because the growing availability of DRM free music online- i have started to purchase mp3 tracks now that they work in my car SD mp3 player, all my computers, my wifes ipod, and my gigabyte T400
Yeah same here. I started using play.co.uk which has started offering DRM-free downloads. I would never use Itunes or other DRM stores because I want to be able to use the music I bought how I want. Now I can download DRM-free MP3s legally I would never consider using Kazaa or whatever.
It annoys me that the music industry has b**tched so much about piracy and not moved with the times. Downloading is the way most people want to get music these days. It's convenient and they should have given us legal sources of downloadable DRM-free music a long time ago. I suppose it was a similar situation when cassette recorders were invented.
I personally think downloading albums is retarded. And hate downloading music in general simply because it's to much of a hassle to keep track of it.
I like having a nice case, with some album art, and a hard copy. I really don't understand the huge interest in Digital Distribution for permanent ownership of anything significant. Not to mention Hard Copies of Albums bypass the whole DRM issue, and it doesn't have your personal information hiding somewhere on the files.
Perhaps I'm just old school like that, but I like having something up on the shelf, and the knowledge that I always have a safe copy.
If I were downloading Music, it would only be illegally.
Buying Albums online is retarded (Digital Distribution for anything significant is retarded).
Probably because all the good music has already been downloaded and all the new crap music, nobody wants to download.
Oh hello 1,500 UK residents, we are going to watch you do illegal things okay! So go ahead... do something, we just want to watch
Probably because all the good music has already been downloaded and all the new crap music, nobody wants to download.
I really agree with that. The last music I downloaded was from Billie Holiday, and she died over 50 years ago.
On the other hand, maybe their hard drives are full.
Watching means monitoring P2P traffic which in general is uncrypted and is advertising IP addresses. Monitoring downloads from Usenet with 256 bit encrypted SSL connections is technically very difficult for ISP's; that's why North american ISPs have cut off access to Usenet all together. Considering the successes of Usenet providers such as Giganews.com and XSNews.com, I wonder if downloads are down; P2P downloads are down.
I personally think downloading albums is retarded. And hate downloading music in general simply because it's to much of a hassle to keep track of it.I like having a nice case, with some album art, and a hard copy. I really don't understand the huge interest in Digital Distribution for permanent ownership of anything significant. Not to mention Hard Copies of Albums bypass the whole DRM issue, and it doesn't have your personal information hiding somewhere on the files.Perhaps I'm just old school like that, but I like having something up on the shelf, and the knowledge that I always have a safe copy.
I respect that view, but I definetly don't agree. If you've paid for some mp3's, why worry about your 'tag' being in them? it's not like you can hear that. I can't say I am not downloading stuff that I ain't authorized to, but I have to admit I've bought more music online in the last years, than I've bought cd's prior to that. I still buy boxed games and other stuff, where online downloads limit the number of activations. But mp3's don't need to be activated
Anyway, yes you're oldfashioned. That is a good thing so long your harddrive has a higher risk of crashing than your house of burning, but in a few years time everybody will have available online, or other, backup means to eliminate the risk of losing what you've paid for. And in many cases you can just redownload the stuff anyway. You can't however replace your case with the megadeth cd in or whatever it is you fancy.
Oh hello 1,500 UK residents, we are going to watch you do illegal things okay! So go ahead... do something, we just want to watch
I don't know for sure, but I would doubt they were actually monitored. These 1500 people were probably just randomly selected and inquired about it. Thus the only factor to blur the end result is dishonesty, which might admittedly be a significant factor.
While I can understand the sentiment of having a hard copy of your music, I think that having a centrally located server that allows you to download your music from anywhere is worth not having a hard copy. Basically I want a "Steam"-like music service. CDs get scratched and hard drives die, but Steam is always there (assuming the company doesn't go under).
My problem with current music download services, is that they do not offer downloads in lossless formats such as wave or flac, I do not want to pay for a severely degraded version of the music. It sucks because the only way to get music in a lossless format is through buying CDs which is now a really dated method of buying music, with only a couple tracks you actually want.
CDs are not loss-less. They are a digital format and any digital format will have some loss (though not necessarily through encoding). The only way to get a true representation of the sound is going entirely analog, from recording to final product.
Now, the vast majority of people can not hear the different between a wav file and a high quality (greater than 192) MP3. Maybe a better argument is that you should be able to buy higher quality MP3s. I guess if you just want to argue the loss-less argument on principle that's fine though. Also, I can't remember the last album that I bought that didn't have more than a few good tracks (though I don't listen to pop music).
or maybe people are using more Google search "Artist" "Album" "Blogspot" to get their music... I don't use P2P programs anymore, I just type that in google and I almost always find a blog with direct links to rapidshare, megaupload or sendspace where I can download my album at faster speeds than in a traditional p2p
Of course - all the new songs coming our are terrible, and we have already downloaded all the classics which we love... So ya, what is there to download? BTW maybe if the recording companies didn't steal MY money for all those years, maybe I wouldn't be taking my share back now! Cheers!