You've undoubtedly heard about the Pirate Bay verdict by now, in which four men were sentenced to a year in jail and fined £2.4 million for their involvement with the file-sharing website, being convicted of copyright infringement in Stockholm last week (April 16). Despite this highly questionable verdict, however, a recent study has revealed some very interesting news about piracy - something those in the know have been saying all along: it helps the industry.
Those who download illegal copies of music over P2P networks are the biggest consumers of legal music options, according to a new study by the BI Norwegian School of Management. After examining the music downloading habits of nearly 2,000 young adults, researchers made an interesting discovery: people who download music illegally are significantly more likely to purchase music than the music lover who uses traditional (antiquated) methods.
The study found that kids between 15 and 20 are more likely to buy music through a paid download than on a physical CD, though most still purchased at least one CD in the last six months. Somehow, despite all indications to the contrary, major labels are still clinging to the absolutely absurd notion that this "at least one CD in the last six months" model is going to be sustainable.
Services like the iTunes Store and Amazon make music buying simple. BI said that those who said they download music illegally (and don't call it "illegal music") bought ten times as much legal music as those who never download music illegally. "Most surprising is that the proportion of paid download is so high," the Google-translated Audun Molde from the Norwegian School of Management told Aftenposten.
Another surprise? Well, not really - major record label EMI isn't buying BI's stats. EMI's Bjorn Rogstad told Aftenposten that the results appear to indicate a correlation between illegal downloads and pay downloads, but there's no way to know for sure. "There is one thing we are not going to see going away: the consumption of music increases, while revenue declines. It can not be explained in any way other than that the illegal downloading is over the legal sale of music," Rogstad said.
What Rogstad doesn't seem to understand in his dismissal is that the findings don't take into account that the music business model has completely scrapped the old rulebook on how consumers buy music. Singles are ruling the market, not albums. I've said it before: I used to be proud of my massive CD collection - I’d have them organized and alphabetized with near-obsession. Now they sit stacked in a large covered plastic bin in the corner, awaiting my next pillaging for some extra cash from Second Spin or Amoeba. At some point in the past year or two they quietly became relics, outdated and absurd. Who needs to deal with scratches and a playlist you can’t remember, when you can take your entire music library with you wherever you go? It’s a no-brainer, and it was bound to happen at some point, no matter how much of a fight the labels decide to put up in an attempt to stop the evolution of musical distribution.
The pirates aren't alone anymore, however. Radiohead's manager has taken up the fight on behalf of the file-sharer.
