
Globally, Almost Four Out of Ten Music Consumers Are Pirates - okket
https://torrentfreak.com/globally-almost-four-out-of-ten-music-consumers-are-pirates-181010/
======
petecooper
I'm another non-streamer and I get most of my music from Bandcamp. The appeal
to me is a lot of smaller labels and artists are on a more level playing
field, I know more money goes to the artists, and the merch selection is
great.

I'm of an era that I remember CD albums would cost 15-20GBP sometimes, and I'm
still very album-oriented in my listening. My 'thing' these days is buying
digital copies of releases I like, and buying a vinyl copy of releases I
_really_ like, so I have a memento. The shipping costs can be steep,
especially trans-Atlantic, but the tangible collection of records in a flight
case is the closest thing to a safe of valuables that I own.

Buy the vinyl, and typically there's an included copy of the digital version
(either a code in the sleeve or a gratis copy in Bandcamp's case), so I can
then download the FLAC and make whatever format I want from there. Total price
typically ends up being more expensive than one of those 15-20GBP CDs from a
bygone era, but I've got a digital copy I can play over and over, and a
physical copy as a keepsake.

I've found a lot of new music from Bandcamp. Their articles are high quality,
and have directed me toward all kinds of music I wouldn't usually listen to.

(Disclaimer: active customer of Bandcamp, not connected in any financial or
professional sense, no other affiliation…though I do think about applying to
work with them from time to time.)

Edit: I use the same username here as I do on Bandcamp if anyone wants to
snoop on my collection and/or wantlist, or be internet friends etc.

~~~
brusch64
Bandcamp is my preferred way of buying music these days. The only advantage of
physival media is the record cover. But I am really pissed if I can't download
the album or if I am just able to download a shitty MP3 of the music I've
bought.

So Bandcamp works great for me. It offers all the options I want (FLAC) and I
like that a band can set the price to 0$ so you can download it from Bandcamp
for free but you can give them money if you want to. Awesome experience all
around. And with the music I like most of the bands are on Bandcamp.

~~~
eertami
What do you find so shitty about MP3, are you morally opposed to it's
origin/licensing?

Quality wise for listening you aren't going to tell the difference between a
-v0 MP3 and FLAC even if you think otherwise. For anyone that wants to claim
otherwise, unless you've had someone setup an A/B test with a significant
amount of cases you're falling victim to placebo.

I say this as a professional audio engineer, who long ago would always seek
out FLAC. Now, unless I need to edit or re-encode a file the MP3 is just as
good, far from shitty.

~~~
goostavos
"Placebo" describes the audio scene people pretty well in my experience.

I did that MP3/FLAC A/B/X test back in my audio engineer days after catching a
ton of condescending comments due to my listening of 'terrible sounding' MP3s.

Either my ears are garbage, or the difference is so subtle that even with
solid headphones in a dead quiet room, the absolute best you could hope to be
able to detect is that one is "different." getting all the way to "shitty"
sounds near impossible to me.

Also, to my surprise, if you burned someone a cd from an MP3 source, but told
the person it was Flac, it'd still "sound really smooth". Hm.

~~~
pasabagi
I was of the same opinion - but I've recently noticed (because youtube-dl, I
think, automatically downloads music at a fairly high quality) that I enjoy
some music substantially more when it's not compressed to hell. Classical
music especially seems much juicier with a high quality recording.

~~~
Arbalest
What do you mean by compressed? Classical music is usually cited with regards
to "compression" in the context of dynamic range compression, not data
compression.

------
iamben
...and yet music industry revenues are on the up again.

If you can't get something legally - because you actually can't, or because
you can't afford it, it's a 'victimless crime' and you desperately want it -
you'll pirate it. But I think most people are happy to pay for the convenience
of everything. £10 a month for Spotify is a no brainer for me. The problem
happens when (label?) greed sinks in again and the streaming services fragment
with 'exclusives' on each. At that point, people end up picking one to spend
their cash on, and they'll pirate or stream a shitty version on YouTube the
songs they can't get on their streaming service.

You want to get more people to pay? Licence everything to everything - then
the only people that will pirate are the ones that would never pay anyway. And
I bet they're a smaller subset than four in ten.

~~~
rayiner
Taking advantage of something someone created on terms different than what
they’re willing to offer it to you is not a “victimless crime.” (Just like
jumping the turnstile in the subway is not a victimless crime even if there
are free seats, or sneaking into a sports stadium.) At the margin it lowers
the price everyone is willing to pay for the item.

As to music industry revenues--they're basically flat over the last 20 years:
[https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=9McmTl...](https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=9McmTlgO&id=4FFA946CAF1E5956E231B9C6EDBD7BAE1AEAF226&thid=OIP.9McmTlgOBg-
jerMtOi-41gHaD9&mediaurl=http%3a%2f%2fwww.digitalmusicnews.com%2fwp-
content%2fuploads%2f2017%2f04%2fIFPI_global_full.jpg&exph=504&expw=943&q=music+industry+revenues&simid=608016356439820520&selectedIndex=3&ajaxhist=0).
Which is crazy, because the number of new consumers that can afford their
product is through the roof.

People treat piracy as a victimless crime because the marginal cost of each
item is zero. Imagine extending similar logic to a handbag. If you steal an LV
purse you can’t afford, how do you measure damages? The $1,000 marginal cost
to physically replicate the purse, or the $10,000 retail price? That basic
logic doesn’t change as the marginal cost goes to zero.

The moral rationalizations don't really hold water. It's not like the music
industry is out there lobbying to prevent competing content. Their whole
business model is creating content that's _so desirable_ that they are non-
fungible--people won't settle for a slightly different clone. Advances in
digital technology have made it so the cost to create content is lower than
ever. But people don't want just any superhero movie, want to see Wonder Woman
or the Avengers: Infinity War.

~~~
leereeves
The music labels who decide the terms of sale didn't create the music. They're
rent seeking corporations who seek to increase their profits in any way
possible and bribe politicians to create artificial barriers through which
they can create toll gates.

And their control is expanding. Older works that should (by historical
precedent) be part of the commons remain copyrighted because of endless
extensions. Practices that were once legal and common become illegal (like
copying tapes vs copying CDs) or technically difficult (like recording music
off the radio vs recording music off the Internet).

Fighting back and "lowering the price everyone is willing to pay" doesn't
sound like a bad thing to me.

~~~
rayiner
The legitimate way to lower prices in a market is to create a competing
product and sell it for less money, not interfere with a creator's rights to
sell their product on their terms. The music industry isn't "brib[ing]
politicians" to "create artificial barriers" to people creating competing
content. Indeed, it's easier than ever to compete with the record labels.
Sites like YouTube offer vast opportunities for creating and distributing
indie content. The only reason the record labels make any money at all is that
they make content people _want more_ than the indie content they could get
elsewhere for cheaper.

~~~
leereeves
Copyright is itself an artificial barrier, as is copy protection and laws like
the DMCA that make copy protection a legal as well as technical barrier.

I respect your right to your opinion that poor people should be prevented from
hearing or seeing something entertaining because a corporation wants more
money (it's rarely the creator who makes these decisions), but that's not the
only legitimate opinion.

Copyright isn't a law handed down by God; it's a fairly new legal creation on
the scale of human history and its constant expansion is a major factor behind
increasing inequality in the world.

~~~
rayiner
> Copyright is itself an artificial barrier, as is copy protection and laws
> like the DMCA that make copy protection a legal as well as technical
> barrier.

Yes, copyright is an artificial barrier, but a barrier to what? It's not a
barrier to fair competition. It's a barrier to circumventing a creators right
to bargain about the price of her creation.

Copyright itself isn't "handed down by God," but the idea that people should
own the fruits of their own labor is an old one. That's all copyright is.

~~~
vidarh
Copyright wasn't created to protect the fruits of the creators labor, though.

The origin of copyright was providing monopoly rights to the Stationers Guild
in Britain to control printing of works under the Licensing of the Press Act
1662. So a right vested in the printers who wanted to be able to sell for much
higher prices than the duplication itself justified, not the authors.

Of course this would also allow them to pay more to authors, because they
would be able to amortise it over more copies, but the guild had a monopoly on
printing, so it was not in any of their interests to substantially increase
the proportion paid to authors - the main benefit of this monopoly was to
themselves.

When parliament refused to renew it after protests because of the censorship
it authorised, the Stationers Guild kept trying to push for it to be
reintroduced, and first then started pushing the "authors rights" angle,
leading to the Statue of Anne (Copyright Act 1710), which was the first
"modern" copyright act in that it vested rights in authors.

But the idea of restricting the ability to copy to favour the _creators_ of a
work was something the printers first started pushing for their own interest
because their abuse of the copyrights previously granted to them directly made
it unpalatable to re-authorise those rights.

~~~
leereeves
And extending the copyright on works whose creators are long dead doesn't do
anything for the creators.

If copyright law wasn't serving the interests of Disney, Sony, and other big
corporations, they'd be pressuring politicians to change it, rather than
expand it to other countries.

------
quantummkv
I am not surprised, considering that pirating songs is still the most hassle
free way to listen to music, especially down here in India. Spotify isn't
available due to label issues and local streaming services don't have a good
selection of non-bollywood music. Now that physical media cannot be used
anywhere in laptops or mobiles and youtube cannot be minimized on mobiles, the
best and easy way to get music, especially western music is to pirate mp3
files and share it on usb sticks and sd cards.

~~~
Grumbledour
Just out of curiosity;

Why is it not possible to buy mp3s? Amazon, play store, iTunes etc. all use no
DRM to my knowledge? Or is it just a question of price?

~~~
rsync
"Why is it not possible to buy mp3s? Amazon, play store, iTunes etc. all use
no DRM to my knowledge? Or is it just a question of price?"

I was going to ask the same thing - specifically about Amazon, which sells
non-DRM, standard mp3s - but it occurs to me this might only be in the United
States.

What does mp3 purchasing from Amazon look like from other countries ? Just a
vastly different catalog ? The same catalog but with DRM files ?

~~~
AnssiH
> What does mp3 purchasing from Amazon look like from other countries ? Just a
> vastly different catalog ? The same catalog but with DRM files ?

For Finland and most other countries, it is not possible to purchase digital
music (or movies/shows, for that matter) from Amazon.

If I try to purchase an MP3 from the US site (amazon.com), I get "We were
unable to process your order with the current payment information. Please
click 'Continue' to select a default payment method and 1-Click address."

Clicking "Continue" just gets me back to the item page, so even the error
messaging is broken. OTOH Amazon Video has a proper error message about
needing a US payment method.

Amazon does offer the Amazon Music Unlimited subscription service here,
though, and I believe it has a catalog comparable to other services (but I'm
not a user).

------
fixermark
That's way down from when 10/10 music consumers were pirates, just trading
songs with each other around campfires and town squares without deep thought
paid to credit.

Seriously, exclusive rights to music creation and reproduction are a pretty
new thing; I think humanity will survive this "recent" trend.

~~~
edanm
> Seriously, exclusive rights to music creation and reproduction are a pretty
> new thing; I think humanity will survive this "recent" trend.

I mean, by that standard, the entire legal system, not to mention having state
police departments vs random mob justice, are also pretty new things. Do you
think that we can do away with those too cause they're new?

Do you give any credence to the idea that part of the reason the last few
hundred years have been incredibly productive for humanity (both in terms of
general economic welfare, but also art), is partly because of things like the
patent/IP system? I'd be happy to know why not, if not.

~~~
fixermark
Legal systems are basically as old as, depending on how you slice it, writing.
If you mean a specific US-centric model of a legal system, it dates back about
a thousand years or so.

Copyright dates back to about the invention of the printing press, so about
600 years old. Common law has a good 400 years on that (and law itself, a
couple thousand years on common law). Copyright is a baby by comparison. And
given that it was functionally co-birthed with the printing press (since
before that time, every copy was a blessing---a work of hand-crafted art
someone had bothered to invest substantive human toil into because they
thought a thing deserved to be recorded in more than one place), I don't think
I have the tools to divide the benefits to society of copyright law from the
benefits to society of mass, cheap reproduction of writeable concepts. It may
have helped. It probably helped more in some spaces than in others. But by-
and-large, it provided a system for a person to go live the "life of the mind"
and exchange art for money instead of something else, and it's unclear to me
that copyright did more than, say, the patronage system to that end.

... all of which is divorceable from the concept of, God help us, exclusive
rights to perform a work, which is the weird space music lives in. Because we
don't even charge by the written copy there; we often charge (to the best of
the ability of the copyright holder) for every instance of "reading" the
record and re-broadcasting it into someone's ears.

Yes, I think one can build a case that the cost of upkeep, overhead, tracking,
and maintenance to move money around in that system offsets the benefit to
society. I think it's incumbent upon the rent-holders and copyright owners to
explain how, absent their Byzantine system of moving money around, our public
spaces would be silent and dead, devoid of creative works.

The history of humanity and our simple desire to sing makes that strike me as
profoundly unlikely.

~~~
edanm
> But by-and-large, it provided a system for a person to go live the "life of
> the mind" and exchange art for money instead of something else, and it's
> unclear to me that copyright did more than, say, the patronage system to
> that end. There are problems with the patronage system. For example, almost
> all the people who could live the "life of the mind" were either the
> privileged few, or the people who appealed the to the privileged. While this
> certainly is one way to fund works, and I'm a huge fan of Patreon, as well
> as a Patron of many people, it's also going to only hit a subset of the kind
> of art we care about, and a very specific subset too (things that interest
> rich first-worlders that are economically better to target.)

> I think it's incumbent upon the rent-holders and copyright owners to explain
> how, absent their Byzantine system of moving money around, our public spaces
> would be silent and dead, devoid of creative works.

The history of humanity and our simple desire to sing makes that strike me as
profoundly unlikely.

I don't think anyone seriously makes that claim (or at least, I don't). I
think my claims were:

1\. On a practical level, this is economics 101 - if we up the reward for
creative works, we'll get more creative works.

2\. On a moral level, as long as we are in this capitalistic system, I think
that one person creating value should have the same reward as another person
creating value, and just because one happens to be easily copied and one
doesn't, shouldn't make a difference. I can't find a moral reason to say to
someone that, should they choose to become an author instead of building
furniture, and should they happen to create works that please millions, they
shouldn't get rewarded for that.

You make it seem like the rent-holders and copyright owners have never
explained why they want the system - but these things have been discussed
since the dawn of the IP system. For one thing, have you talked to
authors/musicians/etc and asked their views?

I particularly remember reading a British parliament member talking a lot
about this issue, including the problems with patronage and the problem with
pirating - in the 1800s!

~~~
fixermark
The musicians I've talked to find the current system really inconvenient and
spend a lot more time arguing with the payment collection organizations then
they would like to.

------
AdmiralAsshat
I like owning my media. The idea that I can pay Amazon/Apple/Google for a
piece of media and they can subsequently yank it out of my library down the
line because _they_ lost their license to distribute it does not sit well with
me. I imagine it doesn't sit well with alot of people, either.

Until the dominant form of distribution allows people to OWN their music, I
believe that piracy will persist.

~~~
lev99
Why do you feel a strong desire for ownership?

I enjoy going to art museums and experiencing visual art, but I never
experienced the inclination to purchase any of it. Music to me is a lot like
that.

~~~
acuozzo
> Why do you feel a strong desire for ownership?

Because I don't trust the owners of the content to not destroy[1] or
permanently alter[2] it in some way.

Mass distribution is necessary for preservation.

[1] 1937 Fox vault fire. 1965 MGM vault fire. BBC TV programs 1967-1978.

[2] The OCN of all three original Star Wars films.

~~~
Washuu
Original Camera Negatives(OCN) - Google made that immensely difficult to look
up due to it thinking it actually knew what I desired to search for.

------
screye
I am of a strong opinion that piracy is about access rather than stealing.

Piracy for the most part is used by 2 types of people :

1\. Those who would never have bought the product because of lack of income to
do so.

2\. Those who find the product to hard to access.

Steam is an excellent example of dealing with both. Steam sales and location
specific prices solve problem 1. Everything one platform everywhere in the
world solves 2.

~~~
saganus
Just thinking out loud here, but, how long until Steam starts offering a Music
service?

Maybe not for big labels/artists, but if they did something like Greenlight
for indie bands... I could see it working... Maybe.

Or am I way off here?

~~~
jarcane
I'd just as soon use Bandcamp honestly. Steam's attempts at media sales have
been awful. Videos are broken and often won't play, music is usually just a
handful of MP3s buried deep in the Steam folders.

~~~
saganus
Good point.

It never even occurred to me that they would sell music so no wonder they are
bad a it, at least for now.

------
wtmt
Somehow I don't like the "rental model" for songs and books that one may enjoy
multiple times in one's life (compared to movies that are usually more
ephemeral, and there may not be many that one would want to watch multiple
times). So "owning" — the rights to copy and play the music anywhere, anytime
and on any device — seems like a better choice than supporting streaming
services where you can't really say if you'd be able to listen to your
favorite song tomorrow.

~~~
ghaff
I feel similar for music I actually care about. That said, I'm coming from a
place where I already had a large collection of music ripped from CDs I bought
(plus from the early days of Napster mostly to replace music I had on vinyl).
And TBH I mostly don't care that much about new music.

I still buy some music even though I subscribe to Apple Music.

But if I were coming from a place where I was starting out and owned no music,
I might think differently.

------
kevinherron
I absolutely used to pirate all my music. Then Spotify came along.

Pandora first, but I can't remember if I had completely stopped using mp3 at
that point. I maybe had an iPod full of music I didn't pay for. Can't really
remember the timelines here.

Either way, just like with movie and TV, I'll happily pay for streaming if the
selection is there.

~~~
braythwayt
_“Your typical architecture astronaut will take a fact like “Napster is a
peer-to-peer service for downloading music” and ignore everything but the
architecture, thinking it’s interesting because it’s peer to peer, completely
missing the point that it’s interesting because you can type the name of a
song and listen to it right away._

...

 _“Talk about missing the point. If Napster wasn’t peer-to-peer but it did let
you type the name of a song and then listen to it, it would have been just as
popular.”_

—Joel Spolsky, “Don’t Let Architecture Astronauts Scare You,” 2001

[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/04/21/dont-let-
architect...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/04/21/dont-let-architecture-
astronauts-scare-you/)

———

In the last 17 years, that quote keeps popping up because the companies that
focus on letting you type the name of a song and listen to it _right away_
have made money, while those that introduce friction to support some label’s
business model? Not so much.

But they keep complaining about “piracy.” 90% of piracy is eliminating
friction.

This past weekend, I bought the new Doctor Who on iTunes. I paid because Apple
gave me a lot of ways to type the name of the show and watch it right away.
Same reason I’ve spent thousands on music with them.

It’s not about the price, it’s about the convenience.

~~~
adrianN
It is also about price though. I'd "rent" a lot more movies online if the
price were the same as when I rented them on DVD, like fifty cents per day.
However it costs like four Euros to stream a movie from Prime Video.

~~~
davidcbc
Where were you renting DVDs for 50 cents a day? That seems really cheap.

~~~
saudioger
There are places in the US where you can still rent DVDs for a dollar a day.
Streaming _rental_ prices feel too high.

------
mellow-lake-day
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say part of the problem is that streaming
services are not available in all countries and if they are the price is not
adjusted for the income level in that country.

For instance Spotify is not available in many countries including Ukraine and
India. The latter having a population of 1.3 billion people. GPM and Apple
Music are better in that regard but nevertheless.

~~~
mar77i
As a "sane" person from a civilized country, I don't have an online payment
account. I couldn't transmit my money to spotify even if I wanted to.

That being said, I also like owning my music. As files. On my own devices.
Running "fair trade" operating systems that let me do that.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
I don't see what's "fair trade" about enjoying the fruits of others' labour
for free.

~~~
nybble41
Indeed—but the labour we're talking about here, the kind regulated by
copyright, is the _distribution_ of the files; and it's the labels and artists
who are employing the force of the State to enjoy the fruits of that labour
_performed by others_ for free, having given up on charging a fair rate _once_
and _up front_ for the actual labour of producing the content in favor of a
more lucrative, albeit less moral, business model.

If you create something that can be copied endlessly at near-zero cost, and
you don't want others enjoying it "for free", then you need to charge an
appropriate price for the initial publication. You have every right to keep it
to yourself, and to charge whatever price you deem fair in exchange for the
service of revealing it to others, but once you've done that it's rightfully
out of your hands.

~~~
mar77i
Interesting writeup. Another aspect to the same thing is why I should pay for
knowledge? It wants to be free, this way I don't need to commit self-torture
wrt educational funding. I seriously doubt I could have paid for the expertise
that made and is making my career much beyond food and rent at the time when I
decided to base it on FLOSS...

------
cailloud
I for one, love to get drunk on rum and pillage coastvillages Arrrr gimme them
shiny discs ye landscruffy or we will keelhaul ye arrrr

In all seriousness, i like to own my music and i love bandcamp. I'm pretty
poor so yeah a large part of my collection is stolen from the shores of india.
But just like books, when i have some extra money i will buy from artists who
i love listening too. If i was rich i would buy everything, but i am not and i
still want to listen too music.

------
peterburkimsher
Right now I'm spending a week at Taizé, a retreat centre in France. There's
access to Internet only from 9:30 am - 8 pm, for 15 minutes at a time, then a
forced 10 minute break (unless I change MAC address).

I don't have a bank account here, so I can't pay for a 2 year subscription for
4G. I also don't have a job. I'm grateful for my offline music collection
keeping me alive right now. Music is especially important when times are
tough, and it's in those difficult times that money and subscription-level
stability are hard to find.

~~~
Rjevski
Prepaid SIM card?

------
mnm1
Streaming services are nice, but I haven't yet found one that contains the
complete discography that is available through torrents and other means.
What's worse, what's available changes often so songs that are available now
may not be available next week. In other words, streaming services provide a
service, but they are far from replacing other means. If a service popped up
that provided streaming of all the music I wanted to listen to 100% of the
time, then it might be worth paying for. Another use case is mixing songs
which usually requires local copies. Basically, all streaming services are
deficient in some way so it shouldn't be any surprise that piracy continues.

------
rdl
I find it impossible to pay any RIAA affiliated artist or label for music
after the battles we had in the late 90s/early 00s. I pirate some music, but
basically listen to audiobooks (which I happily pay for; I probably spend
$1k/yr on Audible) instead of music 95% of the time. I basically view it as
supporting terrorism, even though all of the individual execs from back then
are gone by now.

------
barking
i'd be wary of anything the _IFPI, the International Federation of the
Phonographic Industry_ present as fact.

Similar organisations were until recently engaged in shakedowns of small
businesses for even playing the radio. Even after this was ruled illegal in
Europe we used to still get a letter every year demanding we pay up for the
benefits music was bringing our business.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
Personally, I pirate unless I can buy the music directly from the artist and
download it in a lossless, DRM free format, using only open source software
(or websites like Bandcamp). Maybe about 10% of my collection is paid for.

~~~
mabedan
what does the open source thing has to do with artists being able to earn a
living or not?

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
It's about establishing a mutually respectful relationship between the artist
and consumer.

~~~
jmull
I think you unconditionally dictating all the terms is not respectful of the
artist.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
These are simple terms that serve to preserve the music. It serves the
interests of a third party, not the musician or consumer, if these terms are
not met.

~~~
gehsty
I think it serves the artist if you buy the music, however you buy it, and it
doesn’t serve the artist if you pirate it.

Apply your logic to any other purchase and it falls on it feet. Do you only
buy food direct from farmers? Clothes from factories? Do you only use
supermarkets that use open source payment kiosks?

~~~
rossy
For what it's worth, even Richard Stallman condones the use of proprietary
software on a device you don't control, like an ATM or a supermarket payment
kiosk. This is not the same thing as being forced to run proprietary software
on your personal computer.

------
tyingq
Market fragmentation causes some of this. I pay for a couple of streaming
services, but occasionally rip an mp3 from YouTube for things I can't find. If
there was a "pay and download mp3" button on YouTube, I'd probably pay.

~~~
sp332
According to numbers in the article, a minimum of 24% of music consumers pay
for streaming services and also pirate music.

------
thx4allthestuff
There are two things in this world that I have no problem with anyone in need
stealing - food and music. I will politely look away. When I was a kid I
pirated music, as well as music production software. I grew up pretty poor and
I wouldn't have had those things otherwise (the only reason we had a computer
was because of oil dividends given to all Alaskan residents once per year). I
don't feel like anyone really lost out because of me downloading those things
when I was young. But I know that the music industry eventually gained a
lifetime subscriber (currently Apple Music, for many years now - family plan),
and don't even get me started on the money I drop on software synthesizers.
The good fortune that drizzled on me as a kid came back to those people as a
raging storm. Advertisers know exactly what they need to show me when they
want more of my money (those sweet, shiny synths), and I'm not even mad at
them. They're almost like books now, where I don't even need to use them, I
just like having them and knowing they're mine. That being said, as a long
time amateur electronic musician, I'd love for people to pirate my music. As
it stands I can't seem to even pay them to take it (with music that is).

~~~
kgwxd
Stealing is the wrong word for digital music. Copying. It's just copying. And,
in most cases, it's at an immeasurable cost to anyone. To use the terms
"pirating" and "stealing" not only make it seem much worse than it actually
is, it waters down the mental image of legitimate use of those words, making
the actual acts seem less serious. "Copycats" would be a fairer term.

~~~
H1Supreme
Stealing is the right word. You can spin it any way you like, but taking
something that's for sale, without paying for it, is the definition of
stealing.

To further my point: not every artist is a mega-millionaire. There are
countless small bands/artists where every sale counts towards them actually
earning a living off of music.

~~~
leetcrew
> Stealing is the right word. You can spin it any way you like, but taking
> something that's for sale, without paying for it, is the definition of
> stealing.

it's hardly as clear cut as you are making it. if I have an apple and you take
it, I no longer have the apple. if I have five apples and you take one, I have
four left. it's hard to imagine you taking something from me that I will still
possess afterwards in the same quantity. I would argue that the sense in which
most people use "take" does not include copying.

to further _my_ point: the law in the US, a bastion of copyright enforcement,
clearly recognizes the difference between theft (a criminal offense) and
copyright infringement (a civil offense). you can't go to jail for piracy.

~~~
H1Supreme
I understand your point. But, I don't think that just because something like a
digital album lacks the physical properties of an apple, it's not a product
worth revenue.

Presumably infinite quantities of a something like an album shouldn't suggest
that it's worthless. Resources have been invested into it's creation. Artists
should be able to recoup some of their investment with album sales.

If it's okay to "copy" music, than the same argument can be made for every
other digital product. Games, films, and essentially all software.

~~~
leetcrew
to be clear, my point is that it isn't "stealing". i'm not necessarily saying
it isn't wrong.

when i was teenager / college student i never thought piracy was wrong, mainly
because of the "well i wouldn't have paid for it anyway" argument. now that
i'm a software dev, i have plenty of money for music and movies and i realize
that my own livelihood depends on IP protection. i can't justify it so easily
anymore.

------
ada1981
I think we can at least reduce that number down to 2 out of 5 without much
cost or intervention.

~~~
tshannon
I disagree. Without diligence, that number could skyrocket as high as 8 out of
20. Where would we be then?

~~~
ada1981
I hadn’t considered this as deeply as I should have.

I actually recall something out of the Regan Administration where a similar
scenario actually ended up with numbers of 20 out of 50 - however that was
largely speculative and not officially confirmed.

------
npstr
Six out of ten being legit is what surprises me here. That's pretty high.

~~~
fixermark
The legit channels have a level of convenience now not seen in the piracy
channels, because money pays for proper curation and surfacing of content.

I used Limewire back in the day. I couldn't tell you how many songs in my
collection were artist credit "System of a Down." I think I had a System of a
Down copy of the 1812 Overture in there somewhere.

(It is also possible that legit channels are over-counted in the data because
they're easier to explicitly audit. If the error factor estimate is the same
for legit and bootleg channels, the data will reach the wrong conclusions).

------
rchaud
It's important for me to have a permanent digital copy of the music I pay for.
The modern streaming services' subscription model doesn't allow for that.
Worse still, rather than being a dumb pipe, which is literally what cyber
lockers were, they now have to be a taste-making platform, a modern MTV trying
to shape our preferences and stuffing ads anywhere they can.

I find the music I want by reading community based sources like Last.fm,
RateYourMusic, genre-specialist website, reviews on personal blogs, and
magazines/web publications I trust (e.g. the Quietus).

Thankfully sites like Bandcamp is still around, and offer a decent way to
discover new artists and get DRM-free downloads, no questions asked.

------
8bitsrule
Back in the day, I used to listen to top-40 radio all day long. I bought
_some_ of the tunes I liked. The radio stations paid DJs to sift through
incoming tunes and air the good stuff.

Yeah, I got spoiled into thinking that you got to listen to stuff _before_ you
forked out for _some_ of it. I liked that model a lot better than paying for a
streaming service. My guess is that's still a fine model for most people.

~~~
seizethecheese
This strikes me as unwarranted nostalgia. With Spotify, you can find a
universe of playlist curated by all the people with the best taste in the
world. I find this far more compelling than being stuck with a handful of
gatekeepers for my city in the genres that I like.

~~~
8bitsrule
Nostalgic for good music? yep, that's me.

Good DJ's prove their qualifications with every record they spin. I don't need
an ISP and a subscription. The genre I like is music written by talented
composers and performed by talented musicians. What's the name of that
playlist?

------
rawoke083600
How many out of a 100 ppl "ARE REGULAR" music consumers now vs 20 years ago ?

------
INTPenis
I believe a large part of these pirates are in the increasingly connected
world outside of Europe and North America.

I consider myself a pirate, without shame. My first games on C64 were pirated
and since then I've been involved in piratbyrån and the swedish pirate party.

But I make enough money now to use Google Play Music and rarely pirate music
these days. Mostly movies, shows and audiobooks.

So since this article specifically mentions music I make the assumption that
it's not talking about my world.

A vast majority of people around me use streaming services for music today.

But I have friends in Thailand and Vietnam and there it's quite common to see
pirated movies playing on long bus rides with VIP bus lines for example.

I also have friends on Croatia and Bosnia and there it's also still very
common to go to a neighborhood pirate who will provide you with CDs of your
favorite artists.

So I would be much less surprised if they were still pirating music in these
places rather than using streaming services.

So there's a big world out there with an ever growing connected population,
Africa, Asia, South America, and I'd speculate that they're driving up those
numbers.

------
gwbas1c
I still pirate music... When it's not available in a streaming service, and
not available legally for a fair price!

I think the best way to address piracy is with strong copyright reform.
Specifically, once content is sold for mass consumption, it needs to make its
way into streaming services. Things like artificial scarcity need to be phased
out.

------
Illniyar
Analyzing data for illegal downloads has notoriously being very hard to do.
Where are they getting those numbers?

------
upbeatlinux
Why does four out of ten sound better than two out of five?

------
jokoon
Louis ck used a good solution. You just paid and downloaded the thing
directly.

The problem is the intermediary. People don't want to give money to labels.
It's a little like buying food to your local producer.

I guess even Bandcamp makes money.

Consumers would rather pirate than see a fraction of their money land on some
accountant desk for copyright management. Content is easily copiable, and did
someone to live on their content doesn't require a high price.

In the digital age i don't see how an album could cost more than $5, or even
$1 or $2 if you're not a full time artist.

Louie CK made millions that way, I agree that he was already popular though.

Just let people set their price (Radiohead did that), and advertise that
method on a clean torrent, I'm sure people would pay.

------
AllegedAlec
Why are youtube to mp3 converters illegal? I mean, it's basically just
recoding a signal; I don't see how that could be an illegal action. Might as
well sue me for recoding WAV to mp3 so more music fits on my phone.

~~~
teddyh
Copying, _any copying_ , is breaking copyright, if a work is copyrighted.
There are some defenses you have if actually accused of copyright
infringement, like fair use, but those are exceptions after you’ve been
accused.

Is this absolutely crazy? Yes.

~~~
AllegedAlec
It's so ass-backwards. I mean, in the most technical sense, every ISP, routing
point and whatnot upstream from me to youtube is breaking copyright by sending
me the packets, since it is technically a copy of the work.

~~~
harshreality
It's ass-backwards (any law that makes 40% or more of the population a
potential target of financially-disruptive lawsuits is not a reasonable law),
but let's not get hung up on technical aspects of copying. It's obvious that
ISP routing copies, and similar types of copying, involve transient copies
that are quickly discarded and not consumed by anyone. The case law actually
recognizes this difference. Legally, "copying" a work means _meaningful_
copying, not merely copying data from one place in memory to another place in
memory where it stays for a while until it's freed or garbage collected and
then overwritten.

~~~
kaybe
Note that we _are_ paying for this when buying equipment that can be used to
copy!

------
dijit
Anecdatum: I was a big music buyer because iTunes made it quite easy.

I like to “own” my music, so it was appealing- DRM free, album art and
metadata formatted correctly.

But then they nerfed the ever loving shit out of the music app on my phone and
force fed me Apple Music. Since I ideologically disagree with that model I
went back to the old ways of CDs and luckily I have Plex which handles my
music on my phone now.

It’s not as nice as before but it’s better than being forced into a
subscription.

------
40acres
I used to pirate music, tv and movies a lot. Every hit show, every interesting
album. For me the downsides were tied to the hassle of finding good quality
streams, there wasn't much friction but there was enough that when streaming
came along and I had the disposable income to afford it I went all in.
Streaming will probably never be 90%+ of consumption but as long as it's a
frictionless experience that is portable it will serve many.

------
leothekim
I don't see any stats showing a trend over time. This YouGov report indicates
piracy is actually dropping in one country over the past 5 years (from 18% of
Britons to 10% of Britons).

[https://yougov.co.uk/news/2018/08/02/number-britons-
illegall...](https://yougov.co.uk/news/2018/08/02/number-britons-illegally-
downloading-music-falls/)

------
TomMarius
Yeah - I can't easily buy losless recordings that I'd get as files that could
reside on my NAS, so tough luck. Streaming services offer less than a third of
what I listen to, and their UX is idiotic. I cancelled my Spotify after I
found out that my downloaded songs are deleted from my phone for the fourth
time for some unknown reason, that _really_ pisses you off on a 10-hour road
trip.

------
boomboomsubban
>Stream-ripping users are more likely to say that they rip music so they have
music to listen to offline. This means they can avoid paying for a premium
streaming subscription,

This doesn't make sense. A premium subscription service doesn't give you
access offline, and usually won't help with cellular data caps.

~~~
alexedw
Both Spotify[1] and Apple Music[2] offer offline downloads to premium users.

[1]
[https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/the_basics/list...](https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/the_basics/listen-
offline/)

[2] [https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT204839](https://support.apple.com/en-
au/HT204839)

~~~
AstralStorm
Which you cannot move to another device and need their broken media player to
play. Thanks but no thanks.

Have a real DRM-free shop instead please. Without idiotic user unfriendly
lawyer requiring license to use.

~~~
Mindwipe
Customers have pretty overwhelmingly decided they don't want that, as a whole.

~~~
Krasnol
Did they? Or did they just bend down to what's out there?

------
notmyaccount
Not surprising. I was one of the pirates before streaming services came about.
Now I am not.

Or maybe it was because I was younger and had a finite amount of pocket money
to spend on an infinite amount of desires.

But streaming has definitely made it lots easier to access music.

------
k__
I simply don't listen to music as much as I used to.

Today a Youtube playlist is often enough for me.

------
trey-jones
I certainly did it in college and after (when I didn't have any money? sorry,
I guess). Streaming services are all I need now. I don't need to own it, just
listen to it.

------
throwawayse1
As an eastern european I've gotten so used to pirating everything in my
childhood that even now (25 yo) I pirate ALL of my: books, movies, music,
games.

------
Ace17
Could we please stop using the loaded term "pirate"? Attacking ships and
killing people is way worse than "stealing" anyway!

~~~
consp
The term is in my eyes not used to describe the act of violence in this sense
but most likely for living out side of the law and ignoring most authorities.

~~~
kwhitefoot
Well then it is even more inappropriate because most music 'pirates' are
pretty much indistinguishable from the general population and certainly do not
live outside the law or ignore most authorities.

~~~
xaqfox
Do you expect to listen to sea-shanties on pirate radio?

~~~
cocacola1
I certainly do. After playing Black Flag, sea shanties started to grow on me.

------
ravenstine
4 out of 10? More like 9.9 out of 10 if you count playing unauthorized albums
on YouTube, which I've seen everyone do at least once.

------
readhn
That is actually lower than i expected - since globally only some people are
able to afford music services like spotify, apple music etc.

------
zimablue
This argument about "violation of rights" which assumes some absolutist
intellectual property right, I realised you don't even have to engage in it.
If I could push a button and transfer a million pounds from Ed Sheeran's
account to mine, I'd do it without hesitation. Even if you accept the argument
that I really should pay him $10 per album he should count himself lucky that
society has constrained my theft to those limits.

------
isthatart
From the pdf at the end of the article, this estimate is based on a study of
19000 consumers from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany,
Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, South Africa, South Korea,
Spain, Sweden, UK, US. The population of all these countries is 1.5 billion,
but there are more than 3 billion internet users. Also, a study based on
0.000001 of the 1.5 billion population?

------
jcoffland
Conflating piracy with copying music is fragrantly disingenuous. Pirating is
the theft of someone else's goods by force. Music "piracy" is the
circumvention of artificial scarcity to duplicate information and it leaves
the original property intact. It was a clever con getting us to use the same
word.

~~~
EpicEng
Meaning changes over time. Most of us have accepted a new, alternate
definition of "piracy" in regards to digital media. Whether or not you (or I,
because I don't either) like it is irrelevant.

~~~
jcoffland
I'm for making language mean what we want it to mean and I oppose the use of
the word piracy to mean copying. Is that not how language changes?

~~~
EpicEng
Well, yes, but a word means whatever the majority believes it to mean. You're
in the minority, so...

I get that it's a tactic used by the business end of things, but it's where
we're at now.

------
Aeolun
Of course, music companies see this as a problem instead of an opportunity.

More pawsuits it is!

------
gehsty
I’d say more like 2 out of 5

------
stuaxo
This seems very low, in the days of tapes it would have been nearly 100%.

------
hinkley
I wonder how small Lars’ pool is now.

(Man, can I hold a grudge for a long time)

------
kgwxd
Correlation does not imply causation. It seems unlikely the music itself is
driving people to hijack ships, kidnap, rape and murder on such a large scale.
Maybe there's something in the water.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Are you thinking that "pirate" is a dysphemism dreamed up by industry
propagandists? The first software pirates named _themselves_ that. The
industry would rather call them "thieves" or "criminals," something with less
of a quaint, romantic feel in the modern day.

~~~
kgwxd
Just a joke based on Stallman comments[1]. If that's the case, then it seems
the founding fathers did everyone a disservice. Everyone would be laughing at
the MPAA and RIAA if they were constantly campaigning against "copycats",
maybe even Capitol Hill. It's not too late to change the term if we all join
in.

[1][https://stallman.org/articles/end-war-on-
sharing.html](https://stallman.org/articles/end-war-on-sharing.html)

~~~
PhasmaFelis
They _wouldn 't_ be calling them "copycats." They'd be calling them "thieves."
Even more so than they already do, I mean. "Pirate" is better. A pirate is a
romantic antihero in the public eye; a thief is just a greedy thug.

------
DJBunnies
I feel like one third would have been a better ratio.

------
clubm8
Are the other 6 just not consumers (100% piracy)? :)

------
mgkimsal
which one do i count in, if I participate legally (spotify, purchases, etc)
but also pirate? am I counted in the 6 or the 4?

~~~
sp332
You'll be in the 84% who pay for music subscriptions and in the 38% who
pirate.

------
bambax
The real "pirates" are the content editors who lobby for copyright extensions
so that works of art never fall into the public domain.

Public domain should be the rule and copyright the exception.

~~~
rayiner
> Public domain should be the rule and copyright the exception.

Why? In what other area does the public automaticallt get a right to something
someone else created?

~~~
bryanlarsen
> Why? In what other area does the public automaticallt get a right to
> something someone else created?

If you make a chair and I buy it from you, I can do whatever I want with that
chair.

~~~
vixen99
I don't think the analogy carries weight. It's true for chairs but not for all
physical objects. The law steps in. Thus for example, in many countries what
you do with a house is regulated by national and local laws as happens with
some datasets - such as an audio/visual recording.

------
anon49124
Then music is priced too high.

(And musicians don't get a big enough cut either.)

------
jhabdas
Copyright is a scam from a previous world. Go get it bois:

NewPipe (A free lightweight YouTube frontend for Android.) -
[https://f-droid.org/app/org.schabi.newpipe](https://f-droid.org/app/org.schabi.newpipe)

