Survey Indicates Music Pirates Are Biggest Music Buyers

[incal11]

That's exactly what I'm going to tell you, as nothing in that study tells us there is anything more than correlation. "Buying things because you liked the downloaded version" undoubtedly will be part of the reason, but nothing in here gives us any hint as to how big a slice of the pie that particular reason has.

I won't buy that some points are absolutely unprovable here, we're not talking religion. When it cannot be direct observation even the best science and theories rests "only" on a sufficiently high likelihood.

It doesn't matter how big of a slice it is. What really matters is that it exists and with a decent probability of being a positive influence and also...

We've got more data to put towards us understanding how it all works out. Which is a good thing, even if this particular set of data is nowhere near enough to give us the full answer.

...that this is to be judged according to the many other independent studies with which this is said to be aligned:
http://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/Studies_on_file_sharing#The_.22pirates.22_are_better_consumers_of_.22legal.22_culture

I have not been able to find one study with opposite conclusions that was not directly backed by the entertainment industry, with ridiculously huge provably made up numbers. If you could provide me a link to such a study you would be the first one.
In the meantime here is your full answer.

 

[Kargathia]

Oh dear this old argument.

For me it boils down to this. Piracy is theft, plain and simple, and any attempts to rationalize it are rationalizing criminal behavior.

Theft of entertainment, a luxury good is intrinsically different then theft of food so you don't starve, so don't pull that one out of your butts either.

Reasoning that sounds perfectly viable, until you realise that things are slightly more complicated.
The problem is not pirates having the material, the problem is the owners missing out on sales - economic damage the pirates inflicted on them.

Generally, as it turns out, there's a lost sale for every 1000 downloads. So what are you going to do? Charge people for theft of 1/1000 song? Charge one in every 1000? -or most retarded of all: sue people for 5-figure sums per downloaded song?

Hell, you might as well rejoice, because reaching 1000 people for the price of a single piece of software is a lot cheaper than whatever you're paying your advertising guru.

The current situation is eight flavours of stupid, as content producers are clinging to old habits, and fail to realise p2p sharing downright broke the principle of economic scarcity when it comes to digital content.

You can stubbornly declare piracy to be "wrong", "illegal", "selfish", or whatever else you feel like, but that only accomplishes you having an up close view of a deeper layer of sand.
P2P sharing is here to stay, and we'd definitely be better off looking at the vast range of opportunities it allows both producers and consumers.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

This makes sense to me. I might download something, find that I quite like it, to end up buying the bits of it I like for the next release, or even the thing as a whole. I don't download willy-nilly, though, and more often than not, if I don't like it, I delete it. Kind of poses a question, doesn't it?

If I pirate something, then delete both the .torrent file and the file itself that was pirated, has a crime been committed? Nothing taken, nothing lost, nothing gained...It's not like I stole something, then put it back. I made a copy of something that never left, then deleted the copy. Exactly where is the crime in that instance?

For the digital realm, that's practically the same as seeing something on youtube, then leaving the page.

Oh dear this old argument.

For me it boils down to this. Piracy is theft, plain and simple, and any attempts to rationalize it are rationalizing criminal behavior.

Theft of entertainment, a luxury good is intrinsically different then theft of food so you don't starve, so don't pull that one out of your butts either.

Interesting that we have an entire part of a criminal trial concerned with motive, you know, the part that rationalizes the criminal activity in question, and is often the part of the trial that most often sways a jury...

I wonder if you think a lawyer emailing a copy of his documents to his colleagues is theft too. The client isn't paying for the extra copies, but extra copies have been made! Oh no! People who are not the intended recipient of the material have access to the material!

 

[Kargathia]

That's exactly what I'm going to tell you, as nothing in that study tells us there is anything more than correlation. "Buying things because you liked the downloaded version" undoubtedly will be part of the reason, but nothing in here gives us any hint as to how big a slice of the pie that particular reason has.

I won't buy that some points are absolutely unprovable here, we're not talking religion. When it cannot be direct observation even the best science and theories rests "only" on a sufficiently high likelihood.

It doesn't matter how big of a slice it is. What really matters is that it exists and with a decent probability of being a positive influence and also...

I'm definitely not stating that both statements can't be factually proven - merely that so far those particular statements have no direct evidence quantifying them. We know they are in play, but we don't know how important they are.
This particular study tells us that the group "P2P users" also is buying significantly more music than the group "non-P2P users". Why they are doing so is not part of the study, and any attempt at explaning these numbers will be no more than guesswork until there is evidence to back it up.

We've got more data to put towards us understanding how it all works out. Which is a good thing, even if this particular set of data is nowhere near enough to give us the full answer.

...that this is to be judged according to the many other independent studies with which this is said to be aligned:
http://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/Studies_on_file_sharing#The_.22pirates.22_are_better_consumers_of_.22legal.22_culture

I have not been able to find one study with opposite conclusions that was not directly backed by the entertainment industry, with ridiculously huge provably made up numbers. If you could provide me a link to such a study you would be the first one.
In the meantime here is your full answer.

I am not providing you with a link to a reliable study with completely different results, as there simply isn't one. So far the evidence points towards piracy being advantageous to sales, but that is a long cry from having a full answer to the question of how piracy affects the entertainment industry.

"Having a full answer in the meantime" is a ridiculous contradiction. In the meantime we can only make assumptions, based on the evidence we do have. Consider it a scientific theory, if you will - we're not entirely sure, but we've got enough to work with.

 

[Belated]

I told you so.

The argument as to whether or not piracy hurts profits has already been won [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114537-File-sharing-Remains-Legal-In-Switzerland], by the side that says "no".

Pirates don't spend less money on entertainment than anybody else does. They spend the same amount of money on entertainment, but they just supplement that entertainment cost with piracy. They pay the same, but end up with a little more. Ultimately, nobody loses money because digital files are unlike retail products, in that you can magically copy them with no extra materials. I'm not saying it's a justification for piracy, but it is a good reason why the punishments and fines are objectively excessive and unfair.

Ultimately, pirates will still pay for things because the version you paid for is often of better quality and usually easier to play. The paid version allows you to play online. The paid version lets you rip at lossless format. The paid version plays in 1080p with no block artifacts. Pirates do care about quality. The paid version is a better service, so pirates will generally get the paid version whenever they can. Heck, sometimes they pirate things and then they buy them later.

 

[incal11]

I'm definitely not stating that both statements can't be factually proven - merely that so far those particular statements have no direct evidence quantifying them. We know they are in play, but we don't know how important they are.
This particular study tells us that the group "P2P users" also is buying significantly more music than the group "non-P2P users". Why they are doing so is not part of the study, and any attempt at explaning these numbers will be no more than guesswork until there is evidence to back it up.

and I was saying that no direct evidence is needed because this was not the point of this study. However it does provide more correlation, which is always needed on a subject that is very hard to factually prove. Put it with the other studies that were already done, the link I gave you, and what we have is sufficient correlation. Sufficient meaning that the chances of the two variables (people downloading, and people buying more) being unrelated are becoming very slim. So slim that continuing to doubt becomes less serious an option.

That is until some breakthrough is made that suddenly gives more chances for the anti-piracy camp to be right, and with each study the chances of such a breakthrough happening has been consistently going down. But that is why I used the word "meanwhile", perhaps a bit too generously.

I am not providing you with a link to a reliable study with completely different results, as there simply isn't one. So far the evidence points towards piracy being advantageous to sales, but that is a long cry from having a full answer to the question of how piracy affects the entertainment industry.

What you're asking then is so vast that it is out of topic. The social/philosophical/psychological consequences of "piracy" were not included when I used "full". Constantly broadening the definition of what you'd consider a "full answer" is just a way to avoid saying "here we have enough evidence to make a reasonable conclusion". It should not matter that the conclusion is maybe not to your liking, or seems counter intuitive.

"Having a full answer in the meantime" is a ridiculous contradiction. In the meantime we can only make assumptions, based on the evidence we do have. Consider it a scientific theory, if you will - we're not entirely sure, but we've got enough to work with.

As I said we apparently have two different understandings of what a "full answer" is, yours is out of topic, mine is not a contradiction.

 

[Raesvelg]

I told you so.

The argument as to whether or not piracy hurts profits has already been won [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114537-File-sharing-Remains-Legal-In-Switzerland], by the side that says "no".

Actually, neither that study, nor this study prove a damned thing. Largely because the people who conducted the surveys in question did so with the idea of proving your point, rather than doing a proper job of analyzing data.

For example:

In this study, they use the data from 18-29 year old US citizens who own music files as a way of saying "Look, this group has a high prevalence of P2P usage, and they buy the most music!"

Which doesn't mean a damned thing if we're not looking at the music acquisition methods of individuals, rather than just lumping everyone within a given decade into a single pool.

My music collection, for example, is mostly in the bought/ripped/borrowed category. Relatively little of it comes from P2P usage. My ex's music collection, on the other hand, was almost entirely P2P downloads.

And yet, if you lump us into the same category as "P2P users", it averages out. Worse, my higher level of music purchases is attributed to her piracy.

It's a terrible way to present your data. And yet it's pretty much the exact method I've seen in every so-called study that purports to prove that piracy is a "good" thing.

All they've managed to "prove", really, is that younger people spend more on media than older people, which is something that most folks have known pretty much since the dawn of time.

Without more of their raw data and a chance to analyze it ourselves, we really can't trust their conclusions. Small sample sizes, biased reporting, inaccurate data collection... Even with their data, it'd be difficult to draw any definitive conclusions.

 

[Entitled]

In this study, they use the data from 18-29 year old US citizens who own music files as a way of saying "Look, this group has a high prevalence of P2P usage, and they buy the most music!"

Which doesn't mean a damned thing if we're not looking at the music acquisition methods of individuals, rather than just lumping everyone within a given decade into a single pool.

Lumping together the whole decade is exactly the point. It SHOULDN'T matter that maybe some individuals are mostly pirates and others are mostly buyers. If in the end, as long as official music consumption continues to be a strong counterpart to piracy, it doesn't have to matter that some people are more predisposed towards freeloading.

Like when you are analyzing demographics, it doesn't matter that some people never have kids, while others have a dozen. As long as the global average is around 2.33 per couple, it shouldn't matter that some people WOULD swarm earth like locust, while others would make mankind extinct, if you would only look solely at them.

If the system itself is stable, that's good enough.

 

[xplosive59]

I have spent an excess of around £150 on albums this year, and I still have around 5 albums left to buy, I always buy new releases from bands I like that have been well received and this year has had some big releases.

The thing is, I would not have bought that many CD's this year if it wasn't through discovering bands online.

Take for example my friend who obtains all his music through CD, without finding bands online, he buys about 4 CD's a year on bands he has been listening to since he was 13, his music taste has not developed because he is sticking to safe bands he knows about already and not discovering new music because he does not want to waste money.

In contrast to me who will happily find music that is obscure and contributing to that band by buying there newest album if I like it, going out of my comfort zone if you will, thus I buy way more music than someone who does exactly what the music industry wants them to do.

 

[Raesvelg]

Lumping together the whole decade is exactly the point. It SHOULDN'T matter that maybe some individuals are mostly pirates and others are mostly buyers. If in the end, as long as official music consumption continues to be a strong counterpart to piracy, it doesn't have to matter that some people are more predisposed towards freeloading.

The argument that people who pirate also buy more, however, is the question at hand, and that's where group demographics fall flat.

Besides, the industry in general has been down substantially. Sales are around half what they were a decade ago, and it's been a year-on-year decline; obviously, while the industry can continue to exist, it's not necessarily healthy.

 

[Raesvelg]

In contrast to me who will happily find music that is obscure and contributing to that band by buying there newest album if I like it, going out of my comfort zone if you will, thus I buy way more music than someone who does exactly what the music industry wants them to do.

And this is what we call "anecdotal evidence".

Did I mention that all of my friends keep albino gorillas as pets? So obviously, the albino gorilla is the most common pet in the world!

The above is just my way of saying that anecdotal evidence is functionally worthless. I can contrast your experience with my own; my friend who doesn't even have internet access seeks out new films to buy on a weekly basis, whereas my friend who does hasn't bought a film legally in years. Does your experience override my experience? Or do we simply have to accept that what happens in our own tiny slice of the overall market is not representative of the whole?

Or do you have to go out and buy an albino gorilla?

On a more serious note, there are a lot of options for people who want to discover new music that don't entail actually going out and downloading that music illegally. The notion that piracy boosts sales in specific individuals by means of increasing their range of exposure is... difficult to prove at the best of times, particularly since people with broad musical tastes long predate the rise of the internet.

 

[Kargathia]

Spoiler: snip snap

I'm definitely not stating that both statements can't be factually proven - merely that so far those particular statements have no direct evidence quantifying them. We know they are in play, but we don't know how important they are.
This particular study tells us that the group "P2P users" also is buying significantly more music than the group "non-P2P users". Why they are doing so is not part of the study, and any attempt at explaning these numbers will be no more than guesswork until there is evidence to back it up.

and I was saying that no direct evidence is needed because this was not the point of this study. However it does provide more correlation, which is always needed on a subject that is very hard to factually prove. Put it with the other studies that were already done, the link I gave you, and what we have is sufficient correlation. Sufficient meaning that the chances of the two variables (people downloading, and people buying more) being unrelated are becoming very slim. So slim that continuing to doubt becomes less serious an option.

That is until some breakthrough is made that suddenly gives more chances for the anti-piracy camp to be right, and with each study the chances of such a breakthrough happening has been consistently going down. But that is why I used the word "meanwhile", perhaps a bit too generously.

I am not providing you with a link to a reliable study with completely different results, as there simply isn't one. So far the evidence points towards piracy being advantageous to sales, but that is a long cry from having a full answer to the question of how piracy affects the entertainment industry.

What you're asking then is so vast that it is out of topic. The social/philosophical/psychological consequences of "piracy" were not included when I used "full". Constantly broadening the definition of what you'd consider a "full answer" is just a way to avoid saying "here we have enough evidence to make a reasonable conclusion". It should not matter that the conclusion is maybe not to your liking, or seems counter intuitive.

"Having a full answer in the meantime" is a ridiculous contradiction. In the meantime we can only make assumptions, based on the evidence we do have. Consider it a scientific theory, if you will - we're not entirely sure, but we've got enough to work with.

As I said we apparently have two different understandings of what a "full answer" is, yours is out of topic, mine is not a contradiction.

It seems like I should've been a bit clearer, as there appears to have been a misunderstanding. "The effect of piracy on the entertainment industry" is meant in a purely financial way.
Also, the larger part of the argument concerned that this study, along with its peers, should not be taken as proof of anything more than what they specifically research. It means we are reasonably sure piracy is not the death knell, and possibly even beneficial to the entertainment industry's bottom line, but we can't fully explain how - only speculate.

 

[uncanny474]

the one (well someone else asked this too but I can cover it in one post) person with an intelligent counter.

That is perhaps the only way to rationalize Piracy, is when something you want can not be obtained legally by any other means, I call it the Extra Credits defense. we can still mention that show here right?

Well, if you can't, nobody reported you yet!

On-topic: So, what about something that is out-of-date, and thus out-of-print? Is it wrong to pirate the original versions of the Star Wars trilogy, since you can buy George Lucas' butchered versions? What about stuff with multiple editions, like Dungeons and Dragons--is it wrong to pirate 3.5 when there's a perfectly ruined 4.0 to get?

 

[Illyasviel]

Oh deary me, you've broken the cardinal rule. Please repeat after me: "correlation does not equal causation."

Not only that, but your source appears to have an agenda and used a non-scientific polling method ( "Please respond truthfully, because if you don't, well, we can't do anything to you, but it would be awfully mean of you." ). Furthermore, because they didn't discuss their methodology, we can't even be sure the survey was conducted properly.

This article doesn't tell us pirates are better consumers, this article simply tells us people with a lot of music tend to have a lot of music. From more sources, with greater frequency. Probably because they like music a lot. Probably more than people who have much smaller collections.

If there is anything you should really take from this article, it is:

If absolute spending is the metric, then P2P users value music more highly than their non-P2P using, digital-collecting peers, not less.

and

In the US, according to our survey, 29% of those under 30 listen to 'most or all' of their music via streaming services.

Or in layman's terms, people who like music like music and that traditional economic models are outdated.

But I guess warping results to suit an agenda is much more fun. There's a sucker born every minute, right? Right.

It actually happened to me a few weeks back. I picked up a free to play game and loved the soundtrack to death. I tried to find a place I could purchase it, but there was nothing to be had so I ended up just downloading the soundtrack off some file upload site because there was no way for me to purchase the product.

Sorry, one anecdote does not prove a trend. It doesn't even prove you're telling the truth.

 

[theultimateend]

Oh dear, a highly interpretable piece of research - this should be fun.

It might be good to consider that one might argue this proves nothing more than that the ones who care more about music are also more likely to install a P2P client, and start downloading.
Or that there generally is a budget ceiling to be spent on music, and in general people start downloading when they feel they've already spent enough on legal music.
Or that the old anecdotal evidence of "I buy stuff because I liked what I heard from the torrented version" actually holds statistical significance.

Everyone with any interest in this debate is going to assign causality to these numbers whenever they feel like it, even if they show nothing more than a correlation.

Uh...I think you pretty much hit everything.

Anecdotally I stopped pirating music the second I found Zune Marketplace. The convenience was mind blowing.

Now Pandora gets 4 bucks from me a month because of all the new music I find because of it.

Literally haven't downloaded a single song since, been years and years, and around the time of Napster when I was a kid with no money I was like the godfather of free music.

Crime is the response to an untapped market or an unjust society. If folks spent more time addressing the issues positively instead of bitching about them it would get better. [Drug war is a beautiful example of where angry knee jerking leads].

You of course are not bitching, I meant in general.

I am still going to call bullshit on the I bought it cause I liked what I heard on the torrented version cause if there is a torrent of it then it's highly likely to be on youtube so why wouldn't you just listen to it there.

Convenience.

I'm literally a person that falls under your fantasy category, therefore you are literally wrong.

Edit: Shit I've even purchased humble indie bundles for soundtracks.

 

[chadachada123]

Or that the old anecdotal evidence of "I buy stuff because I liked what I heard from the torrented version" actually holds statistical significance.

Hm, the point of this study is how it shows that this *isn't* anecdotal. So yes, according to this study it does hold statistical significance.

But you're going to tell me how that's not the case, right?

That's exactly what I'm going to tell you, as nothing in that study tells us there is anything more than correlation. "Buying things because you liked the downloaded version" undoubtedly will be part of the reason, but nothing in here gives us any hint as to how big a slice of the pie that particular reason has.

While it's just anecdotal (which is what you guys were discussing), I know that Enter Shikari owes a good $60 of pure money solely to the fact that my friend pirated their music and showed it to me.

Without my friend showing them to me, there is no way I would have ever heard of them, and thus no way for them to have gotten money from me for seeing them live and buying one of their T-shirts, a significant amount of money far more than the $5 or so they "lost" from my friend pirating their shit.

OT: Like others, Skrillex recognizes that piracy is basically free advertising for the REAL money-makers: Live shows.

Any artist that bitches about piracy is not only irrational but also lazy, because the majority of an artist's money has always come from live shows (and merch sales at those shows). Only a small chunk of a CD's sale money goes to the actual artist: Most of it goes to the RIAA/record label and not to the people that deserve it most.

Edit: For those interested in how I obtain my music, well for starters I am not nearly as big into music as I used to be, but even in my prime piracy never really came into play because the vast majority of music that I listen to are mixes that are easily and legally obtainable for free. I've supported artists that I truly enjoyed during this time, but mostly it's just getting mixes for free for me.

Now, it's mostly Pandora, since it gets me even MORE mixes to listen to, but I also still download awesome (mostly Pony-themed) remixes when I see them or hear them.

 

[Epona]

Oh dear this old argument.

For me it boils down to this. Piracy is theft, plain and simple, and any attempts to rationalize it are rationalizing criminal behavior.

Theft of entertainment, a luxury good is intrinsically different then theft of food so you don't starve, so don't pull that one out of your butts either.

Well you are 100% wrong.

1) Piracy is not theft, it is copyright infringement.

2) Go steal some food, see if the law treats you better because it isn't a luxury item.

 

[sonofliber]

Oh dear this old argument.

For me it boils down to this. Piracy is theft, plain and simple, and any attempts to rationalize it are rationalizing criminal behavior.

Theft of entertainment, a luxury good is intrinsically different then theft of food so you don't starve, so don't pull that one out of your butts either.

you do realice by your own words, that if you lend a cd or a game (or shit even renting one) you are actually stealing right? your friend didnt buy the game or music yet he enjoys all the benefits of it (and renting is basically paying a friend how bought a game to lend it to you)

 

[Strazdas]

Or that the old anecdotal evidence of "I buy stuff because I liked what I heard from the torrented version" actually holds statistical significance.

well that does hold true. i know many people who download music and if they really like it they decide to buy it. obviously my observation is subjective, but this research seems to prove it to be correct. and i personally would have newer even known about Dream Evil had i not heard a pirated version of it first, loved it and then bought their all albums.

I am still going to call bullshit on the I bought it cause I liked what I heard on the torrented version cause if there is a torrent of it then it's highly likely to be on youtube so why wouldn't you just listen to it there.

downlodign via torrent or downlaodign via youtube illegaly is exactly the same. your argument makes 0 sense. yes, listening to songs on youtube uploded by random people IS ILLEGAL.