Copyright Law

UK SURVEY: Teens Prefer Streaming to P2P

By soulxtc

Illegal file-sharing down by a third meaning efforts to combat piracy may make little difference for the music industry as it tries to halt declining revenues.

The Leading Question, a consumer research company dedicated to providing insight into the world of digital music, has released the results of a survey it conducted with over 1000 music fans aged 14-64 that provides some interesting insight into the state of illegal file-sharing in the UK.

It found that the overall percentage of music fans file-sharing regularly (i.e. every month) has gone down since the last national survey. In December 2007 22% regularly file-shared tracks, but in January 2009 this was down to 17%, a comparative drop of nearly a quarter.

?File-sharing is a moving target, so industry and Government policies need to recognize this,? says Paul Brindley, CEO of Music Ally, which assisted Leading Question in the survey. ?It?s already being somewhat displaced by other means of accessing music for free. Some are licensed, many are not licensed and some

involve a bit of both. Kids find services like YouTube much more convenient for checking out new music than file-sharing. But even YouTube can become a source of piracy with some kids ripping YouTube videos and turning them into free MP3 downloads.?

This echoes comments made by Techdirt’s Michael Masnick this past February in which he argued that the music industry needs to learn to “compete with free.”

Compete with Free (CwF) + Return to Business (RtB) = The Business Model ($$$$)

The biggest drop in those regularly file-sharing occurred amongst 14-18yos.

Between December ‘07 and January ‘09 the percentage of 14-18yos who were file-sharing at least once a month dropped from 42% to just 26%.

This is despite the fact that the percentage of music fans who have ever file-shared has, unsurprisingly, increased, rising from 28% in December ‘07 to 31% in January ‘09. The move to streaming music is clear with the research showing some 65% of teens are streaming music at least once a month. More fans are also regularly sharing burned CDs and bluetoothing tracks to each other than file-sharing tracks.

There are now more UK music fans regularly buying digital singles (19%) than illegally downloading them (17%) every month, though with albums the numbers are inverted, with illegal downloads (13%) outpacing legal purchase (10%).

The survey also shows the ratio of total pirated to purchased tracks has halved since between December ‘07 and January ‘09 from 4:1 to 2:1.

What the survey really means is that by the time some of the anti-piracy measures proposed in the recently released Digital Britain report actually take effect, which now won’t happen until 2010 at the earliest, the nature of the piracy threat is likely to have changed dramatically, and the got’s stated goal of reducing piracy by some 70% will probably have little effect in restoring the revenues the music industry claims have been lost to P2P.

?Ultimately we believe that the best way to beat piracy is to create great new licensed services that are easier and more fun to use, whether that?s an unlimited streaming service like Spotify or a service like the one recently announced by Virgin which aims to offer unlimited MP3 downloads as well as unlimited

streams,” added Tim Walker, CEO of The Leading Question.

Either way the news is sure to bolster critics of the Digital Britain report who argue it caters to “industry insiders” and not the public at large.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

Full post as published by ZeroPaid on July 16, 2009 (boomark / email).