Today we have some good news for the major record labels. The renowned market research group NPD has found that close to half of all Americans who were pirating music via P2P applications a year ago, have reportedly stopped doing so. As a result the number of US music pirates decreased by 12 million. NPD attributes this unprecedented shift to the LimeWire shutdown, but we fear that it wont have any effect on record label revenues.
For more than a decade the music industry has claimed that digital piracy is the main cause for the gradual decline in revenues. However, looking at the sales data of the music industry itself shows that the disappointing income might be better explained by a third factor that is systematically ignored.
Millions of people are downloading copyrighted music every day, using file-sharing software such as BitTorrent and LimeWire. Some argue that the music industry has brought on this behavior by refusing to innovate. Others, including the RIAA and some lone researchers beg to differ, and see other reasons for this deviant behavior. So who’s right?
A report just published by the market research firm Interpret has tapped into the downloading habits of a massive 64 million respondents. From this group, well over a third admitted to downloading music illegally through file-sharing networks and BitTorrent, but that doesn’t mean they don’t buy any music.
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