New statistics from the copyright industry was released recently, but with all of the claims on how music sales are falling, comparing one statistic from Canada and one statistic from the global figures appears to have painted a very interesting new picture on the Canadian music marketplace for the copyright industry.
The latest statistics were promoted by the IFPI and a copy of the claims were published on the CBC. In these statistics as selected by the copyright industry itself suggests that physical music sales – namely CDs and vinyl sales – fell by 15%. Meanwhile, digital music sales grew by 24%.
The copyright industry, for years, have been claiming continually that Canada’s digital music marketplace is out of date and weak. The blame has seemingly been placed on Canada’s copyright laws – hinting that without copyright laws, innovation would practically cease to exist in Canada. To date, the evidence that was put forth has fallen short on anything other than wild guessing as demonstrated by the statistics the last time the Canadian DMCA was introduced. So, if the claims are true this time around, comparing Canada’s music sales against the worlds music sales should back that up, right? After all, the copyright industry has been publishing these numbers themselves. It seems as though that is not the case.
According to statistics published by Nielson Soundscan and posted on in Michael Geist’s blog in January, physical music sales fell by 8.5% in both Canada and the United States. Not bad considering the global number was a fall of 15%. As for digital music sales, digital music sales in Canada grew by 69% – a number that makes the global music growth of 24% look very modest. Given that the continual claims by the copyright industry include that Canada is lagging behind all the other countries in terms of a digital market place, these statistics appear to say otherwise. It seems more likely that, at the absolute minimum, Canada is pushing the digital music sales growth higher and pushing the global physical sales loss to a smaller number more than half of the countries in the world.
So, on quick glance of the copyright industries own statistics, it seems that the claim that Canada is falling behind the other countries in the world has taken another credibility hit.
oh and i’m a dj and own over $10 000 in vinyl. so on average i paid $20 for tracks i can download for a $1
im’ canadian and i’ve downloaded music since mp3′s first showed up online (i don’t know lets say a decade a ago). i buy music, my friends buy music, most make music themselves.
and if i hear a track i just must have, i try to find the artist and buy it from them. which is pretty easy.
but i’m off the beaten track listening from everything from classical to hip-hop and dnb.
guess the majors just don’t have those type of artists
Quote “….The copyright industry, for years, have been claiming continually that Canada’s digital music marketplace is out of date and weak. The blame has seemingly been placed on Canada’s copyright laws – hinting that without copyright laws, innovation would practically cease to exist in Canada.”
While copyright laws in Canada do seem to imply that it’s easier to exploit, it doesn’t leave any excuse for poor distribution and lack of legal content due to “territorial licensing arrangements.”
There is such a lack of digital content on demand through legal channels in Canada. US TV shows that are watched daily on Illico and satellite can’t be downloaded at iTunes. Sites such as Hulu and some content on YouTube cannot be watch by viewers in Canada. Distributors always cite “licensing restrictions” as the reasoning.
I have said it before and I will say it again, if you do not make content available to potential customers and make it easily available through legal methods, your customers will turn to illegal P2P networks to find what content they want.
You can’t point the finger at P2P saying Canada is rife with piracy and everyone is downloading series’ of 24 and Heroes for free and it’s all Canada’s weak copyright laws when you don’t even make it available to buy on iTunes Canada.
Wow, what a shocker!! Another of their credible statistics falls short on the actual data. Wonder if there will be a retraction on their behalf, followed by an apology for blatant lies these people keep “pumping out”?
the first commenter is correct. growth rate will be higher when a market is less mature, lower when a market matures. if canada had a relative high growth rate, it lends some support to the argument the market is lagging behind others.
Growth figures without comparative data on actual unit sales doesn’t sustain your conclusion (or tell you much of anything). You can grow 100% because you’ve grown from selling 2 units to 4 units or from 200000 units to 400000 units, and that’s a pretty big difference. Even Geist admits in his post that “there is no disputing that Canadian sales are starting from a lower point than U.S. sales” (and hence fewer sales will result in a faster growth rate).
Look at their population compared to ours, of course we will never reach their numbers. In order to be realistic about this you have to consider that growth is growth. We got better, 69% better, with OUR system of copyright. I find this as fairly compelling evidence that we need not adjust to the systems of other countries.