Napster - the original face of illegal downloading, now turned legal.
Most ‘illegal downloaders’ are among the industries’ best customers, or so it seems...
Before recently Blurred Keys hadn’t much concrete to go on, but as it turns out the feedback we have got in the past from the majority of downloaders of music, games, films, and TV programs, is probably a correct view of the real situation. In that ‘illegal downloaders’ also buy loads of DVDs, CDs, concert tickets, and cinema tickets, they watch TV, listen to radio, and frequent establishments which pay royalties - all adding up to the fact that most are the industries’ best customers.
A new research backs this up – “According to the 2005 Speakerbox survey, people who share or download music from illegal sites spend up to four times as much on legitimate music sites than other music fans” - electricnews.net.
That’s not to say there aren’t people who will download illegally and never pay a penny for music, there are. But the overall impact of P2P downloading is grossly being exaggerated by the concerned industries.
A recent report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development agrees, “Digital music piracy is acknowledged as a problem by the OECD but the report cites other factors -- such as the rise in the number of entertainment sources -- as being more likely to have had a significant impact on music sales” - electricnews.net.
If you were to believe a lot of the downloaders, P2P actually has increased their spend on music, and other entertainment. For others, their media consumption just far outweighs what they can afford and this is partly backed by the rise in the number of entertainment sources, as cited by the OECD.
It’s also as well to point out, in past years where the music industry were shooting about the decline in sales, but unlike the US, CD sales were actually up in Ireland – or so claimed the Irish Times’ ‘the Ticket’ supplement. In addition France, Germany, Japan, and the UK also “experienced steady or growing CD sales”, according to an ElectricNews.net article. Meanwhile going wildly unchanged, the word of the reverent industries is accepted as fact by a worrying amount of journalists.
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