Average Teen’s iPod Has $800 Of Pirated Music
Jun 16th, 2008 | By James Lewin | Category: General, iPods & Portable Media PlayersAccording to a new survey, the average teenager’s iPod has about $800 of pirated music on it:
On average every iPod or digital music player contained 842 illegally copied songs. The proportion of illegally downloaded tracks rises to 61 per cent among 14 to 17-year-olds. In addition, 14 per cent of CDs (one in seven) in a young person’s collection are copied.
Illegal copying in some form is undertaken by 96 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds surveyed, falling to 89 per cent of those aged 14-17. Nearly two thirds copy CDs from friends, and similar proportions share songs by e-mail and copy all the music held on another person’s hard drive, acquiring up to 10,000 songs in one go.
The University of Hertfordshire’s stats seem high, but if the actual numbers are anywhere near these, it’s no wonder why the mainstream music industry is hurting.
The industry needs to open up to new ideas, like using podcasting as a promotional tool, and creating CD releases that are more of a tactile experience, so that there’s more value in owning the physical release.
The mainstream music industry is hurting because, instead of embracing an exciting new market for their products, they’ve spent the past 10 years fighting progress tooth-and-nail and being hostile and agressive with the consumers they expect to give them money. Given the treatment of the RIAA to their customers, its surprising that they actually are able to make any money whatsoever today… So while they bellyache about “losing” $800 of revenue on sales of music that they never would have had anyway, independent record labels are flourishing by creating interesting new music (instead of just repackinging the same crap that the big labels have been pushing for 20 years), giving people easy access to that music (by embracing online purchasing), and they aren’t encumbering the consumers use of that music (through the use of archaic DRM). If the big labels can’t see the error in their ways, then in a truly free market, they should either fix it or perish. There is no law that states that big record labels must exist at the expense of the small independent labels and consumers’ rights.
Ha! I found this while working on an opinion paper about music piracy, and here is what ive found so far.
Music Piracy: You Wouldn’t Steal It!
Almost everyone has seen the controversial anti-piracy “You Wouldn’t Steal a Car” advertisement by Universal Studios. Not only does piracy exist for the movie industry, but for the music industry as well. One of the most controversial topics of the century, music piracy has stretched its way across the world, from China to Sweden to the US. The question that has been debated since the invention of the audio cassette—is music piracy legal?
I believe that when someone purchases music, they purchase the rights to that piece of music and thus can share it or use it in whatever way they see fit. I think that in most cases, pirated or shared music—like when you copy a CD for a friend or family member—can actually help the artist.
For example, I used to have 4 “shared” songs from the album Paper Trail by T.I. on my iPod. I ended up enjoying the music so much that I went to Best Buy and bought the hard copy of Paper Trail. In this way, pirated or shared music can encourage buyers to go out and buy an artist’s album.
Another way pirated music helps artists is by giving “radio time” to little known, independent label artists. Only a handful of artists are signed with the major labels—Universal, Sony BMG, and Warner: most artists belong to small, independent labels. Those few major labels have the money to publicize their artist’s music—Music videos, radio time, or ads, but the many independent labels do not. Nobody wants to buy a song that they haven’t listened to firsthand, so pirated music can act as sort of “radio” for the little known independent labels, letting buyers experiment with unknown artists.
Music piracy has long blamed for the downfall of retailers. However, this could be because the smaller companies can’t compete with the discounted albums from the big retailers—Best Buy®, iTunes, and Wal-Mart.
[...] download music download it illegaly and of those that have CDs 14% of those CDs are illegal copies (Citation). Now, $800 is a lot of money, so obviously something has to be wrong. Can we really trust the [...]