skorchedbellend
March 30th, 2004, 09:22 AM
This excellent article in the register refutes claims by the UK and australian equivalent of the RIAA that downloading is losing them money.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/36616.html
"In a survey of 3667 members of the public aged between 12 and 74, 17.8 per cent said they had downloaded music. Of those, 92 per cent - 600 people - admitted to using illegal file-sharing sites.
On the basis of this figure, and an assumed 48.78 million members of the music buying public, the BPI reckons some eight million Brits are stealing songs via illegal file-shares.
And they're buying fewer records, the BPI says. Among music downloaders, album spending was last year was down 32 per cent on 2002, and spending singles was down 59 per cent.
By contrast, UK album shipments have remained broadly flat over the past three years at around 232 million units, while the volume of single purchases has dropped 30 per cent year-on-year.
In other words, downloading music discourages punters from buying records. We have never been entirely convinced by the counter-argument - that downloaders buy more music, because they get to sample more of it - but the BPI's numbers also warrant closer scrutiny.
'Shipments' and 'spending' are not the same thing. The BPI admits that album prices fell last year. "Latest figures show that almost half of all CD albums now retail for under £10," the BPI notes, down from around £13, in our experience. So if the number of CDs sold remains the same - at around 232 million a year - of course the public is spending less. By around 23 per cent, according to those pricing figures.
So if they had bought the same number of albums in 2003 as they had in 2002, downloaders' spending would typically have dipped by around 23 per cent in any case. The fact it has fallen beyond that is a matter for concern, but the revenue lost to downloading - if it is indeed due to downloading - isn't as much as the BPI would have us think."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/36616.html
"In a survey of 3667 members of the public aged between 12 and 74, 17.8 per cent said they had downloaded music. Of those, 92 per cent - 600 people - admitted to using illegal file-sharing sites.
On the basis of this figure, and an assumed 48.78 million members of the music buying public, the BPI reckons some eight million Brits are stealing songs via illegal file-shares.
And they're buying fewer records, the BPI says. Among music downloaders, album spending was last year was down 32 per cent on 2002, and spending singles was down 59 per cent.
By contrast, UK album shipments have remained broadly flat over the past three years at around 232 million units, while the volume of single purchases has dropped 30 per cent year-on-year.
In other words, downloading music discourages punters from buying records. We have never been entirely convinced by the counter-argument - that downloaders buy more music, because they get to sample more of it - but the BPI's numbers also warrant closer scrutiny.
'Shipments' and 'spending' are not the same thing. The BPI admits that album prices fell last year. "Latest figures show that almost half of all CD albums now retail for under £10," the BPI notes, down from around £13, in our experience. So if the number of CDs sold remains the same - at around 232 million a year - of course the public is spending less. By around 23 per cent, according to those pricing figures.
So if they had bought the same number of albums in 2003 as they had in 2002, downloaders' spending would typically have dipped by around 23 per cent in any case. The fact it has fallen beyond that is a matter for concern, but the revenue lost to downloading - if it is indeed due to downloading - isn't as much as the BPI would have us think."