
File-Sharers Buy 30% More Music Than Non-P2P Peers  - evo_9
http://torrentfreak.com/file-sharers-buy-30-more-music-than-non-p2p-peers-121015/
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girasquid
A lot of my friends are music fans (Shameless plug - that's why I built
<http://beathound.com>), and across the board the ones with large libraries
are the ones who both pirate and buy the most.

For example, in the last couple weeks Mother Mother released a new album - the
friends who get all their music legitimately were saying "Oh, Mother Mother
has a new album out - I'm going to check it out soon", but the pirating
friends were saying "Mother Mother put out a new album; did you buy it yet?".

In my experience - the friends who pirate the most are the ones who are the
most excited about their music, and they do whatever is easiest when it comes
to getting it. If that's buying it - they do that (or at least, that's how it
seems based on my limited sample size).

~~~
icelancer
That's well said. I would imagine that pirating media is highly correlated
with purchasing it.

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Grunnt
Correlation != causation. If the numbers show that file-sharers buy more music
than people who do not file-share, this does not prove at all that file-
sharing leads to people buying more music. Maybe sharing of music files and
buying music have a common cause: a passion for music.

It's just what you want to read in these numbers. People who download a lot of
music (as in not buy it) unsurprisingly tend to believe in this causation
without question.

~~~
marvin
Correlation is not causation. But this _is_ hard data about the habits of
file-sharers vs. the average music listener, and it seems to directly
contradict the RIAA's claims. And how would you otherwise attack this? Is
there any other methodology you think would be suitable for proving or
disproving RIAA's claim that file-sharers alone are a net negative for the
recording industry?

~~~
sirclueless
That's a straw-man argument. The question isn't whether file-sharers are net
positive or negative. The question is whether if file-sharing were reduced,
would the industry be better or worse off. It's entirely possible that if
file-sharing was more risky or less accessible, the people who file-share
would spend a lot more on music.

I'm pretty sure that the RIAA has never stated that file-sharers are bad for
the music industry, just that file-sharing is bad. Those are two different
things.

~~~
nitrogen
_I'm pretty sure that the RIAA has never stated that file-sharers are bad for
the music industry, just that file-sharing is bad. Those are two different
things._

This style of argument has been used extensively by the various media industry
associations. There's Valenti's famous Boston strangler analogy, the Home
Taping is Killing Music from the BPI, etc. I don't recall any specific
references in regards to file sharing, but I'm certain they've been made.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videocassette_recorder#Legal_c...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videocassette_recorder#Legal_challenges)

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Taping_Is_Killing_Music>

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majormajor
So filesharers aren't, on average, I'm-not-giving-them-a-penny sorts. But
that's not the really key question, is it? If filesharing wasn't so easy,
would they pay more for services like Spotify as alternate music discovery
mechanisms? Or maybe just buy more directly? Or, to account for all options,
maybe they'd buy less?

~~~
andrewcooke
i don't know without being re-born in an alternate universe, but i think
there's a reasonable argument that i would simply give up on music - or just
stick to a relatively small collection of classical and jazz standards.
finding the good stuff is quite time-consuming; i wouldn't buy enough to do it
and i'm not impressed with pandora (not that i can listen to it any more);
radio doesn't cut it (except for radio 6 - i guess that would get even more
middle age male listeners, but then that's free anyway ;o). in other words, as
i think others have said: downloading is the new radio.

[updated: i'm not convinced this is a good-faith conversation, but if you're
really curious, and not just wanting to say how you would do things - after
asking what downloaders do, and saying you are not one, then dismissing my
response - then i work like this: get a recommendation; grab an album; add it
to random shuffle ("radio"); eventually notice certain tracks; become fans of
those bands.]

~~~
majormajor
Interesting—personally, I find filesharing to be a really crappy discovery
mechanism these days. It's ok as a "this was recommended to me by a friend, do
I actually like it" vetting mechanism, but Youtube has surpassed it for that
for me. Someone can drop a youtube link on a page or in a forum post, and I
can click it and get the music streaming to me right away. Filesharing was the
new radio thirteen years ago, when the alternative was MIDI downloads or
nothing, but I'd say Youtube serves that role today for the majority of
listeners.

(Well, actually, if we're talking the population as a whole, radio is still
radio—it and traditional TV are both still doing far, far better than internet
pundits predicted five or ten years ago.)

~~~
trafficlight
That's where private trackers like What.cd shine. Discovery is incredible. I
can see what's new and popular from the last 24 hours, I can see all the
similar artists for a specific artist, or I can download a curated starter
'collage' (as they call them) of a specific genre.

~~~
voltagex_
And then spend the next year frantically trying to recover your ratio...

~~~
trafficlight
You gotta be a little careful, but I make sure to download everything during
the freeleech events and to seed forever.

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sergiotapia
The truth is that personally, if I could pay say 20$/month and consume any
media I want and download what I want I would. But the fact is the music is
too god damn expensive, and purchasing a song is too hard. A song - 5megabytes
mp3 file - is much easier to download from literally anywhere on the web.

Now you don't even need a program to do it, just use a website like
mp3skull.com and you can get any song instantly.

It's a mixture of price and ease of acquisition.

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dpepsi
"Ripping CDs and sharing files with friends account for a higher percentage of
people’s music collection than P2P file-sharing across all age groups."

I wonder how much of that is broken down between "ripping CDs" and "sharing
files with friends". I can't remember the last time I, or anyone I know,
"ripped" a CD.

~~~
sp332
In my spare time over a few weeks I once ripped my entire CD collection. But I
haven't bought a new CD in ages... Lately I have been ripping DVDs and Blu-
rays though.

ETA: In case anyone was wondering: rips (not re-encoded) of about 50 DVDs, 17
Blurays and even 7 HD-DVDs is ~1.3 TB.

~~~
ghshephard
The few times I've attempted to rip one of my DVDs, I was discourage by the 2
Hour + wait (using Handbrake on reasonably beefy Windows 7 Box) - I've been
tempted (though, never actually followed through) to just repurchase some of
my more popular DVDs on iTunes just to avoid having to go through that pain.

How long did it take you to rip those 74 shiny discs?

~~~
sp332
It does take a while. I have a fairly fast drive but it still takes 2 hours
for some BDs. I definitely wouldn't recommend doing it right when you want to
watch the movie :) Generally I put it in right when I'm about to go somewhere
else, so it's done or close to done when I get back. For the 7-disc Ghost in
the Shell series, I just did it over 2 days, swapping out discs whenever I
happened to remember.

Of course I also installed Win95 on floppy discs back in the day, so maybe I'm
just crazy :)

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jtokoph
My guess at a contributing factor is that Person A shares a song illegally
with person B. Person B likes that song, finds more from that artist/album and
then makes a purchase.

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KaoruAoiShiho
That's obviously because most people don't like music at all.

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InclinedPlane
The interesting thing here is that musicians don't actually make any
significant money from radio airplay or streaming services like spotify or
pandora. If completely unregulated file sharing results in an equivalent or
greater amount of financial benefit to the artists then that's a rather
interesting data point, I'd think.

~~~
fossuser
Probably equivalent (or very slightly less), but then again the artists aren't
the ones that are taking enormous amounts of money from the streaming
cervices.

