because there's actually no way to calculate it. at all.

i do agree that sites like rapidshare are operating in a bit of a dodgy area, profiting from ads when most of their traffic comes from illegal downloads, but there is a definite and legitimate need for these sorts of sites as well (they are very frequently used by people distributing any sort of original content that they dont have the bandwidth to do themselves, including, yes, independent musicians).

they do usually remove illegal content when they notice it - its just hard to tell without human intervention whether a file is pirated or not, and the immense popularity of theses sites makes examining every file a very impractical thing to do that would probably end up destroying them. i would treat it like ebay - the place is absolutely loaded with fake stuff, but its clearly an incredibly useful site for all sorts of legitimate reasons as well.

I've done a complete 180 the past 12 months or so - I'm not sure I've downloaded an entire album for free in that time.

It's a few things - most of them to do with boring stuff like web access, but also guilt, now I'm in a position where I can afford to pay for it.

The result is I'm kind of back to where I was before MP3s emerged - I'm listening to a lot less music, but what I'm listening to, I'm listening to more and in more depth than when I had a backlog of 70 million records that I ended up skimming over.

"i think a lot of people download a lot of things they would otherwise not have the chance to hear or not be willing to pay out for to start with."

I used to buy a helluva lot of albums just to hear them after reading reviews or hearing them once at a friends house, either because it was before Napster existed or I couldn't find them/get them quickly cus of dial-up. Before broadband and streaming being everywhere I used to buy so much just to see what it sounded like, without really knowing if I was going to love it or not. Whereas now I pretty much only buy stuff I know I already love, either because an ex has nicked it, the CD is scratched or I don't have it when I want to listen to it... am I alone in this?

emphatically.

why can't journos review albums from low-quality mp3s? i'd much rather do that than sit in some major label office and get to hear an album once, maybe twice, before getting the chance to review it. some have started doing streams and watermarked mp3s but that's not useful when i do most of my listening to music on public transport or in the gym.

The one thing that has always struck me about this is that if the average US citizen buys 1.4 albums a year and the report mentions "US broadband users spent an average of $12.50 on music in 2008, compared to $7.80 for UK broadband users, and a mere $0.60 for Spanish broadband users" there must be a lot of people spending nothing to cancel out even people like my parents who might buy 7 or 8 albums a year between them, let alone music fans who think almost nothing of spending £50 a month on records / downloads. If 7digital or whoever will allow me to d/load say 400MB of new records (call that 75 singles for the sake of argument or 6 full albums) and 100MB of older records (to counter older stuff being £3-5 now) for £25 a month I'll take that. Will probably reduce the number of impulse purchases I make and I'll end up spending the same over the year I'd say. They could also offer an option of d/loading an album for £4 and letting me purchase a CD copy it for an additional £2-3

This whole affair smacks of shutting the stable door after the horse has not only bolted but lived a full and prosperous life in the mean time. Even shutting down every p2p and file hosting site will not prevent a generation of music users thinking they can get stuff for free. They'll find another way.

It's ridiculous to assume that students all over the world would be out spending money they don't have if they couldn't get stuff for free. They'd shrug their shoulders eventually and decide that maybe they don't need to hear every Frank Zappa album ever.

you should maybe be using eMusic which is kinda like that? Or if you can wait 'til it goes DRM-free then the new Napster might make sense.

the way people think music should be free hasn't be helped by the irresponsible message Radiohead sent out, which to most people was that music was free (and interestingly the album was huge on p2p http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071018-p2p-vs-radioheads-free-rainbows-why-p2p-can-be-a-hard-habit-to-break.html )

The figure is completely unworkable. Even if it was correct, how many of these downloads can be acounted to someone downloading every single release from one lable all in one torrent? Or someone downloading a huge trance library just for the sake of it. Many many people download things just for the sake of it, because its there. If it wasnt available to them online for free, they wouldnt go and buy it so its notlost money. Its a small percentage of people downloading a hell of a lot of music thats the problem.

I bet illegal downloading is a much smaller culture than we think, its just here on dis we have the perfect breeding ground for it,(music enthusiasts who are generally tech savvy and have a lot of information about leaks and such) therefore we see it as a bigger problem.

that you can't expect everyone who illegally downloaded a song last year would've bought the CD/vinyl had the download option not been available, but a few people beat me to it. I used to look at things that way and it was frustrating, but I think the key thing is to realise that simply isn't the case and find a way around it.

I do think we're going to see a serious increase in products and services similar to Nokia Comes With Music. Broadband providers, mobile phone companies, the Government (perhaps in a similar scheme to TV licences), large online stores and others will no doubt be looking at doing this, and whilst it does bring money back into the system, how does it feed down to us indie labels? The majors will sign deals and take a percentage, so they're sorted, and some of the bigger indie distro's will do the same, but when you consider the thousands of 'bedroom labels' who, between us, make up millions and millions of illegal downloads, but induvidually don't add up to much, we're bound to be overlooked. Unless there's something I just haven't considered here...?

but i wonder, if - as I suggested in my predictions for this year over on my http://seaninsound.blogspot.com/2009/01/nine-predictions-for-2009.html - labels began to sell (access to) their entire catalogue or made it easy to download, say, every Now album, whether people would pay for the package. Rather than what I've done a few times which is download a bands discography because I wanted one album which I could only find to order on Amazon and would take 2 weeks for delivery. Conversely, when we were doing our podcast we found it quicker to buy tracks from iTunes than find the CDs amongst the piles in the office, riddle me that!?

I suspect it isn't 95% of people who listen to music are downloading it for free but I put money if you even went to dinner parties with your parents and saw their average friends computers, you'd find, they've have 50 or so tracks, maybe rare Dylan bootlegs like my old sociology teacher used to ask me to help him find (not sure if I got extra credit for that).

the Radiohead model means less money for new talent development; where are the job cuts at places like EMI? A&R not in PR and Marketing.

"It means that due to file-sharing via P2P, blogs, IM-ing, YouSendit/Rapidshare-ing zip files, CDR's, hard-drive swapping, etc. the record industry is only making 5% of the money it could potentially be making" is incorrect.

is estimated at around 10-1 on PC's and is a huge problem for that industry hence the introduction of draconian DRM on certain games. Which doesn't work either and just pisses off people who legitimately buy the product.

I agree that the industry needs to change though. I-Tunes and similar programmes are priced at joke prices. The average consumer after an MP3 is given a choice of either paying more for an MP3 album than a physical one or downloading illegally for free. They can hardly be blamed for taking the illegal option. I don't illegally download and use e-music (I think amazon's selection of £3 album's is also a more reasonable stance). Surely, a more workable model is to work out all the costs associated with the label, work out how many people would be willing to pay a subscription and then come up with a flat fee to access all music or something similar, instead of 'well, a CD in a shop used costs £10 so we'll charge £11 for an MP3. Also, as pointed out, general music sales in this country haven't fallen by 95% it does suggest that people are downloading things they wouldn't actually otherwise be buying so the figure is a bit misleading.

what uses these millions of people have for p2p? i'm yet to have heard an answer to this.

I think censorship of services is a better option than DRM or closing down brilliant sites like Muxtape is essentially a lot of what I was saying boiled down to a soundbite.

but that's likely to be a viewpoint that's more attractive to industry insiders than the rest of us. For me, DRM isn't a problem because I'll never pay a penny for anything with it, and the loss of Muxtape and its ilk is a very, very, very small price to pay for avoiding the intrusive and awkward measures suggested in Option 1.

The majority of p2p data transfer is almost certainly copyrighted material. But it's also a great way to distribute open source material.

all music should be free. if you don't like the fact you're not going to make money from it, don't do it. Simple. As. That. if it means less music, then that's just tough shit

Mainly yousendit to be honest. If i'm working from home I log in remotely and control my work computers. Sometimes I need a file that is local to work machines and too big to email. So I get onto yousendit and a few minutes later I have the file at home. That's why I wouldn't want to have sites like that completely blocked. I don't see any reason to censor anything, you wouldn't want music or films censored so the same freedom must be applied elsewhere.

However I do agree something needs to be done and don't know what it is. My feeling is that a majority of people in the world don't care less about the makers of art/entertainment. DIS users are not indicative of the majority because we're not listening to the mainstream and the same is probably true of the films we watch and books we read. Most are happy to download Britneys album and buy shonky DVDs of a guy in a pub.

Hope this didn't sound too pissy as I agree with the sentiment but not some of the solutions.

are a fool

There won't be any dissipation in the demand from music listeners for music, and sure as there are creative souls about there'll be those to make the music. The problem is working out a fair solution for all involved, somewhere between old-model industry extortion and the free-for-all technological destruction of copyright model.

For some reason this article kind of shocked me. not the bit about how much is downloaded and how much the music industry is losing, but the fact that a DIS editor took what seems like a pretty hardline view.

Am i the only one that is quietly confident that music will survive no matter what happens to the music industry? I understand that the business side of music is somewhat important in terms of funding the production and promotion of the music, but i actually think that it is much less important than everyone seems to think.

I download stuff, but i always buy cd's that i like. Mostly coz i like having the artwork etc. Obviously most of my money doesnt go to the band, it goes to the plethora of middle men. In a way maybe the best thing for bands to do would be to make their music free online, but then charge more for live shows. If they are good enough, people will want to see them live and will pay for it. i would anyway. if music was free for legal download, i would still probably buy quite a few cd's. i realise i may be in a minority. i'm just rambling now, i really have no solution to the music industries problem, but i guess my point is that i don't really care. I'm almost 100% positive that the best bands out there are not in it for the money.

reading back through this, i realise how shit a post it actually is, but i'm still going to post it.

...would productivity increase or decrease?

LIES. If illegal file-sharing ceased to exist, I would buy about 1% of the music I download illegally.

so many people make naff-all money out of music and carry on doing it anyway, i guess because they like it. i presume if there's no change to their income, they're not going to stop on a whim. now go and get a job. or a lobotomy.

Especially the point about phones and MP3 players. Spotify/last.fm/etc with a 3g phone pretty much achieves most of it already.

I'm not even going to touch this can of worms.

In a nutshell though, outlawing P2P, Rapidshare or anything of that nature is LUDICROUS. Both are use legitamately - for instance, last night I downloaded a new Linux ISO via a torrent and updated the software on my Popcorn Hour using Rapidshare.

Argh. No. I'm not going to do this. The stats from the IFPI are incalculable and bollocks and so are these 'methods' to save the music industry.

The premise of adding 'tax' to the bills of downloaders wouldn't be too hard to implement, surely?

There has to be another catch.

To have a fair music tax system, whereby even the most passive, humble artist recieves fair game, the ISP's and the collection agencies would have to create an infrastructure specifically for the purpose of data transfer / royalty allocation.

This process will cause some serious stirs in collection establishments like the PRS-MCPS et. al. Royalty streams will have to be re-worked and in some cases re-routed, and jobs that were once relevent, will shift into lower levels of importance.

This alone has a MASSIVE impact in the rate of address of these piracy problems. These societies have found their place in our music biz heritage. They have become comfortable in their laziness, and will put up a fight when they're told to change some ethics and develop new platforms to accomodate our need for high-speed digital climate.

Yearly royalty reports are a joke. What is this the fucking 50's?

This is an accellerated culture, get with the program, ey?!

I didnt offer any solutions I just questions how the stats were worked out.

and kinda just said that people are in music for the music and doin it rather than cash.

.

That I don't illegally download music myself. In fact I don't download music at all, I prefer the physical product in high quality.

Oh hi, Kik is back!

it's wrong that itunes etc should charge more/the same for a download album than amazon do for a physical product. I understand that music has a value however a digital track can be replicated for (virtually) no cost to the label/band yet the price point is still based on the cost of a physical copy.

If BMW could replicate their car exactly with minimal cost (i.e the cost of technology to do so, in musics case a computer) would they still charge £30,000 for it? Since the production costs is lower we would assume the cost to the consumer could be lower.

So i would suggest for a start downloads should be more realistically priced.

when a mate of mine was telling me he sold 1000 records and when they did a quick -p-p check on the big names etc, they found 6000 copies of his album. in the meantime he was working in a cafe. wonder what the people listening do for a living? So it really does affect the little guy more than anyone else. I think the measures above aren't practical in today's world. especially when you think about wifi access etc.

you need money to make your art sure but i consider making music a luxury. it's fun its not work in the traditional 9-5 sense, so yeh you gotta get money but lets be fair about it, im not going to pay loads of money for something it doesn't cost the band to replicate.

i'm not complaining, and i have a good job. a .but i don't think working in the music industry should be a 'luxury' and i'd add that most people that work in the industry worked very hard to get there one way or anothe, and work hard to keep there jobs (especially these days)....and i know what your saying, it's not massively important - being a nurse, a doctor, working with the 1000's of aids victims in Africa, that stuff is important - but i still think it's important to have The Arts, and thus musicians and music- no one has ever said being a musician was easy - it never has been - nor should it be - but i'm not sure i'd regard it as a luxury. i think people that make a living out of music are very, very lucky - but they work hard. really hard. harder than most 9 to fivers..

i work in TV - that's not a 'normal' job either is it? that make it a luxury? or do i work my ass off in a really really competitive industry (a lot like the music biz) . . it's a lot like being a musician and i can assure you it aint no luxury.

a lot of working musicians work a lot harder than 9 to 5....you just see all the fun bits.

no one asking for a hand out - is just there is hardly any money about anymore for up and coming bands and that is due to people downloading.

jonny_rat - i think we argee. although i think we should all go back to the 8track.

I was in favor of this even *before* my computer crashed. Fuck digital downloads...but fuck me because I'm going to have to steal about 3000 records this weekend. But I'm sure I won't feel as bad having to steal them the second time 'round. Heh.

I think we're just gonna have to get used to the idea that indie labels will not survive. Major labels will have to cut waaay back and eventually they'll die too. Musicians will self-release everything and then have to tour in order make money. Even Silver Jews toured last year!

I think labels provided a terrific amount of band support that will have to be financed by bands themselves (ie bands will interview pr companies and not the other way round) if they want professional management. But unless the price of phyical copies comes waayy down in price, no one will be paying for music for long. The only reason people pay for iTunes now is because I won't give them a what.CD invite. You have to ask me nice. :)

One issue I do not see being raised to a satisfactory degree, even in the original article, which only gave it a cursory superficial mention is this:

Major labels spend millions, MILLIONS on initial outlay, marketing, promotion, advances etc... therefore, they need to recoup all this off sales to break even, let alone turn a profit.

This is unsustainable and totally unnecessary.

If someone could tell me a major labels average spend ratio of return per £ investment I would love to see it. Evenmoreso I would love to see this figure for each artist individually like Girls Aloud, Robbie Williams, Take That, Sugababes, Coldplay, U2, Killers and other stadium sized acts.

My point here being that; smaller labels will always survive, because their outlay is so small. Sustainability is the key to anything wishing to survive - as the economic collapse will attest.

I am not concerned about the major labels losing/not making massive money on their massive investments for two reasons. One, they are still making A HUGE PROFIT, and two, that particular part of the music industry, whilst accounting for 95% of sales (I just made that up, but you get the idea, yes?) accounts for only 5% (made that up too) of the artists IN THE WORLD.

It is not true that these smaller profits mean labels are investing less in new talent and A&R. it is an industry that proliferates itself through newness as much as reliability – it cannot find a reliable source of income without discovering itself in the first place.

This is absolutely the most crucial aspect of this debate and one I do not see being addressed.

Apparently the record industry is in trouble and there is some kind of economic crisis crunching everything up. If that were true, why is it so many releases on so many labels have all sold out? Why are those labels still putting out record after record? Why are all the gigs still selling? Why are people still making music?

Why am I still spending £100’s a month on records? I spend as much as I possibly can, which is currently more than I have ever been able to spend before. I fully expect this trend to continue for many years. I realise not everyone is as interested in music as me, as dedicated to buying it direct from the artists (many of whom are not even signed by any label, no matter how small a bedroom it is run from), or as committed to keeping physical releases alive as an art form, not just a fetish or novelty item (I am also committed to downloading it too, how else would I hear so much. How. Else. Huh?).

I say that in opposition to the casual “5-albums-a-year” mainstream that bought the 40 million copies of The Bodyguard soundtrack, 30 Million copies of the Titanic ost, 25 miklion copies of Hootie and the Blowfish, and kept Wet Wet Wet and Bryan Adams at Number 1 for 16 weeks each.

Fuck. That. Shit.

That’s my bit for this.

GxMx

p.s. I do not understand why people buy tracks online. Because they want them instantly? Mailorder arrives the next day people, and when it does it looks and sounds like someone gives a shit about it.

Statistics are ridiculous and so are the solutions.

For me, it is much easier for me to download my music illegaly than legally. Why would I pay for an inferior service?

This certainly is a shame for some artists, but the industry is going to have to evolve for this new market. Services like last.fm and spotify are good examples where the it's free, easy, useful and the artists will still get paid a bit.

...because it's a major hassle (downloads are 100 times the size), just like with TV/movies. Illegal music downloading is simply ahead of those mediums because it uses less digital space.

What the recording industry needs to do is sell the digital music for an appropriate price. A large part of the cost of a CD in a shop goes to the retailer (who has to pay for premises, bills, staff etc.) and the distributor (who has to get the product from the pressing plant to the shops/warehouses). If you break it down to the actual cost of recording and marketing, the price of a track ought to be something like 29p. Apple (iTunes) just announced they're going to do tiered pricing, but the minimum level (59p) is still too high. If albums were £2.99 to buy online (five US dollars would be a nice pricepoint), as they really should be, they'd be a lot more popular.

I agree that subscription models are generally great for the consumer, but totally unfair on the content-makers. If one user pays £10 and downloads a thousand tracks, they get less than a penny, whereas another might only download 15 and they'd get around 50p (after costs). This makes no sense for them.

...that most people aren't regular/power Internet users (yet). My mum in her 60s is online (and thus counted in the stats for people using the 'net) but wouldn't have a clue how to download music, legally or otherwise.

but i really can't be bothered. being a musician is important and it is a luxury.

the other day. I mean, seriously, what do people expect when they're charging about a pound for an mp3 (which up until very recently would have had DRM)? This is a site full of music lovers, many of whom are involved in small bands and therefore know how difficult it can be for artists. But does anyone really think that average person is going to pay for overpriced mp3s when a DRM free equivalent is available for free? Would you do it for any other type of product?

I know I'm stating the obvious here, but it seems like the music industry hasn't faced up to the fact that there is no way they can continue to charge the same prices. The draconian measures suggested would work for a bit, but people would find simple ways around them. The music industry has to accept they can not beat the problem of free downloads, they just have to do their best to compete with them. I know many people who would buy legal downloads if they were cheaper, DRM free and they could be assured of good quality. Many still wouldn't - but it would go some way to helping the problem.

Fact is, even if illegal downloading was banned it would not mean that everyone rushes out and buys some obscure cd for a tenner. It would just mean that the band still gets poor album sales and less exposure - therefore less people coming to their gigs.

It might be hard to accept, but maybe the record label that can barely pay its bills is just not very successful. It's not like before illegal downloading everyone who came in to the industry made loads of money. The reason small musicians have to work day jobs is because its a difficult industry with an unreliable income. Banning illegal downloads will not change this - the simple fact is not everyone can be a rockstar.

wasn't that banning downloading would result in people buying more music but it would mean people developing services like Spotify, we7, etc...

I mean, the stats would kind of suggest they were, but I just haven't read any article that offers any sort of case study or whatever, plus there seems to be a lot of y'know, good bands about still. Obviously people get dropped, but I mean, are there good people who've been forced to give up, are there any sort of loose stats about the average working wage of a jobbing band member, etc?

I'm kind of ambivalent about the whole thing, in that selfishly as a consumer I haven't seen anything getting worse for me, and so I kind of find it hard to get as overly worked up as people clearly are here.

But why the fuck do I care if you spent 12 hours in a windowless room? You chose to do that. I don't expect to get paid for reading the newspaper, cooking dinner, making someone a birthday present, or any of the things I might do in my spare time. You can have the 9 to 5 job that plenty of other people have if you want, so I think you should hardly complain about your own choices about what to do in your leisure time.

...so how much would pay to hear my mp3? or if your curious would you just download it for free. the latter right. why would you play for something you don't know or trust? that's stupid.

radiohead where as irresponsible as the KLF where in burning a million quid. They are a huge, huge band who make a very good living from music. To equate that with a small band is naive.

not everything is equal.

some really good points mutatman.
i would be really interested to see how many people on here have even been in a signed band/worked in the industry or even know anything about how it works, apart from buying records, and loving music....

anyhow - it's clear that opinions are pretty divided, which is strange. People usually listen to the musicians they love...and i bet your favorite musicians wouldn't agree your arguments that everything is fair game....

The idea that those 95% of downloads are 'lost sales' is ridiclous - as a former Oink and Libble member I can tell you that I would download who discographies by bands I didn't even really like, just because I could and it was free.

The Oink closure scared me enough to move to legal alternatives like last fm, emusic.com and now spotify. I now realise that piracy IS theft - ok so I might never have bought most of what I downloaded illegally but I would have bought between 2 and 5 albums a month - instead I downloaded that many every day for a while and bought 0. I guess the same can be said for many people.

Now that we have plenty of legal ways to get high quality, cheap (even free) music LEGALLY then I guess it is time to get tough.

ISPs should start by blocking access to illegal torrent sites, blog hosts should close down illegal blogs quickly and file hosts like Rapidshare should be made to hand over the identity of uploaders whenever an infringment is found.

Note to 'pirates' - the 'try before you buy' argument is no longer valid (see spotify/last fm etc)

The DRM argument is no longer valid (see emusic, amazon, play.com and itunes).

The price argument - ok itunes is too expensive but emusic isn't, and if you don't mind streaming the music every time you listen to it then spotify is free.

Or make it worth their while. Which isn't easy considering you can get it for free, illegally, but with little chance of punishment.

I reckon back-catalogue boxing is one way to go.

solutions that you were referring to, surely?

Here's my two solutions:

1. Stockholm syndrome music bloggers stop thinking up new and exciting ways to harm music and stifle freedom.
2. Music industry RIP

I'll be honest I think illegal downloading is the best thing to happen to music. I'm not just saying this from a consumer stand point because I intend to be distributing some music at some point in the near future and if I charged for it then realistically noone would listen to it. Illegal downloading has allowed small bands and independent music to thrive as they can get their music out to everybody and many bands are in favour of it as well. The only people against it are major record labels who are missing out on lots of money and I think that's quite frankly a positive thing. Would we rather people fork out lots and lots of money to major labels whilst less high profile music goes unnoticed or would we rather allow freedom where everyone is equal in terms of distribution?

he is using it as a barometer for general cd consumption. Most cds are sold to a mass of people who buy the same 5-10 cd's each year and without them the industry has alot less money washing around.