Study: Music Sales Are Unaffected by Piracy

Interesting new findings here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21856720

IMHDO most research is biased

If somebody can explain to me how a number one album before the internet had to sell hundreds and hundreds of thousands of copies to make that position and the numbers since have gradually lowered to a release being able to acheive a number one spot for 60 thouand are so. Not to mention, there were alot of bands with platinum and multi-platinum releases before the internet and today it is a MAJOR deal for a band to get a gold record.

It's only about digital music sales. I never understood why you would want to pay for a digital download anyway. But that study seems zero sum - obviously there is a correspondence between illegal downloads and legal downloads, but I don't think it has as much to do with people first downloading an illegal copy and then paying for a legal one, but rather something on MTV being the flavor of the day and thus getting lots of clicks on both legal and illegal links at the same time.

Might as well reverse the statement and say "legal downloads help increase illegal downloads".

I think they should count digital and physical copies when certifying an album gold, platinum, or whatever. If an album has sold 300,000 physical copies and has 700,000 legal downloads, I think it should be certified platinum.

This study is too narrow to paint any kind of definitive picture on a worldwide scale, they are looking at the download habits of 16,000 Europeans over a year period. What about the US which is the #1 country for downloading pirated material? If you want to do a study you need to take other countries into account.

I think piracy is just one of many factors that have led to the current decline in music sales since 1999. People that claim piracy has no impact on sales are sadly mistaken...however, people who think piracy is solely to blame are equally incorrect.

2012 was the first year since 1999 that actually registered a small increase in sales from the prior year (mostly in legal downloads), each year before that had registered precipitous declines overall. Physical media continues to decline (except for LPs) but in 2012 the increase in download sales was enough to counteract the continuing drop in physical media purchases.

James B. wrote:

IMHDO most research is biased

If somebody can explain to me how a number one album before the internet had to sell hundreds and hundreds of thousands of copies to make that position and the numbers since have gradually lowered to a release being able to acheive a number one spot for 60 thouand are so. Not to mention, there were alot of bands with platinum and multi-platinum releases before the internet and today it is a MAJOR deal for a band to get a gold record.

yep. are you lying or using statistics

I would have thought they already count digital sales, I am a fan of both the cd and the mp3 one thing I really like is if you buy a cd online I like the option on some purchases where I get the mp3 album too, this way I can hear my new purchase immediately and not in a few days but for all practicality I think for me I use mp3 more than cds

S.D. wrote:

What about the US which is the #1 country for downloading pirated material?

Aren't we #1 because of population + access to broadband internet compared to other countries? Or are we #1 to scale?

Shawn Of Fire wrote:

S.D. wrote:

What about the US which is the #1 country for downloading pirated material?

Aren't we #1 because of population + access to broadband internet compared to other countries? Or are we #1 to scale?

or we are just cheap...

Shawn Of Fire wrote:

S.D. wrote:

What about the US which is the #1 country for downloading pirated material?

Aren't we #1 because of population + access to broadband internet compared to other countries?

Yes, I believe that is the primary reason, however the numbers are staggering. Not sure when this list was compiled but the US is more than double the amount of any other country.

The Top 20 Countries With The Most Illegal Music Downloads

1. United States: 96,868,398

2. United Kingdom: 43,314,568

3. Italy: 33,226,258

4. Canada: 23,953,053

5. Brazil: 19,677,596

6. Australia: 19,103,047

7. Spain: 10,306,829

8. India: 8,965, 271

9. France: 8,400,869

10. Philippines: 8,351,260

11. Mexico: 7,522,865

12. Netherlands: 6,671,428

13. Portugal: 5,587,198

14. Poland: 5,029,204

15. Greece: 4,919,567

16. Hungary: 4,470,948

17. Chile: 4,210,641

18. Romania: 4,152,252

19. Sweden: 4,074,594

20. Belgium: 3,880,900

That is also a useless statistic.

For sure USA is also number one in legal downloads.

I don't know about "useless", but it is only part of the picture.

Here is a Time magazine article about music sales being up in 2012 for the first time since 1999.

http://business.time.com/2013/02/28/revenue-up-piracy-down-has-the-music-industry-finally-turned-a-corner/

and another...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/09/music-sales-2012-digital-physical_n_2440380.html

It is worth noting that sales of CDs declined by another 12% in 2012. The only physical format on the increase are LPs.

I was trying to find worldwide per capita sales to show Americans still buy more than most, but that kind of stats aren't apparently readily available via just googling.

However...

...I found this fun graph that is very much related to what these forums are about:

http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2012/04/where-metal-music-rules-a-world-map-of-heavy-metal-bands-per-capita.html

Number of heavy metal bands by capita.

America consumes more music than any other nation. America also has much larger populations than any other nation on that list. So those raw numbers are misleading as they don't account for population. A per capita figure might me be more revealing.

The real statistic is how many musicians can do music full time without having to be waiters on the side.

I am wondering how they track those stats? If they can track illegal DL's what else are they tracking and why are the sites still active?

Dark Horseman wrote:

The real statistic is how many musicians can do music full time without having to be waiters on the side.

No it's not...because that would include every bar band or coffee house guitarist on the planet...they can't all make a full living.

S.D. wrote:

It is worth noting that sales of CDs declined by another 12% in 2012. The only physical format on the increase are LPs.

The way it should be

One can only hope that this trend permeates and more bands sling it.

Addy wrote:

I would have thought they already count digital sales, I am a fan of both the cd and the mp3 one thing I really like is if you buy a cd online I like the option on some purchases where I get the mp3 album too, this way I can hear my new purchase immediately and not in a few days but for all practicality I think for me I use mp3 more than cds

I am one that prefers the physical product, but I've noticed this trend as well. Smaller indie distributors have been doing this for a while, but Amazon now offers this on many titles.

Many LP releases also come with download cards for the .mp3s and in some cases the .flac files.

QuothTheRaven wrote:

Addy wrote:

I would have thought they already count digital sales, I am a fan of both the cd and the mp3 one thing I really like is if you buy a cd online I like the option on some purchases where I get the mp3 album too, this way I can hear my new purchase immediately and not in a few days but for all practicality I think for me I use mp3 more than cds

I am one that prefers the physical product, but I've noticed this trend as well. Smaller indie distributors have been doing this for a while, but Amazon now offers this on many titles.

it really doesnt matter the medium to me as long as it is counted as a sale but i do think buying just single songs should not be included if it is.

[quote]

Dark Horseman wrote:

The real statistic is how many musicians can do music full time without having to be waiters on the side.

No it's not...because that would include every bar band or coffee house guitarist on the planet...they can't all make a full living.[quote]
Yeah, I was being tongue in cheek. I do think it's harder to make a living only doing music.