As part of a series of posts leading up to a discussion hosted by GW's Cyberlaw Student Association, I am writing a series of posts on the state of the RIAA's file sharing lawsuits and the general state of the industry. Here is the first (crossposted at http://www.gwcyberlaw.org):
As we close in on next Friday's discussion at GW Law on the RIAA File Sharing Trials, I thought it might be helpful to post some news and background info on the general state of things in the file sharing world. Follow the jump for the goods.
This morning's contribution is an article from torrentfreak.com analyzing a report on spending data of music consumers released late last year. The TorrentFreak crew is probably not what you would call 'unbiased' in the debate, but a) who is? and b) they still make some interesting points, namely:
Compared to music buyers, music sharers (pirates) are…
* 31% more likely to buy single tracks online.
* 33% more likely to buy music albums online.
* 100% more likely to pay for music subscription services.
* 60% more likely to pay for music on mobile phone.These figures (as reported by the music industry) clearly show that file-sharers buy more digital music than the average music buyer. In fact, the group that makes up the music buyers category actually includes the buying file-sharers, so the difference between music sharers and non-sharing music buyers would be even more pronounced.
The data is from a late 2009 Jupiter Research study on piracy. The study was conducted in Europe but it probably translates relatively well to the US market. (nothing to back that up - just seems like it would be in the ballpark)
Whenever I see data like that the first thing that jumps out at me is lack of any depth in the data. The categories used - "Music Buyers", "Music Sharers", and "Internet Users" are not all that helpful. Left out is any indication of how much overlap, if any, occurs between the groups. If a "Music Sharer" buys music online isn't she also a "Music Buyer"? Certainly both are "Internet Users". What about demographic or other control data that would account for factors other than one's music acquisition preferences?
Another key factor that doesn't get mentioned is demographic differences. Again without any actual data in front of me to back it up, I would submit that most "Music Sharers" are young and many financially dependent. How about some data comparing "Music Sharers" with "Non-Music Sharers" within the same demographic groups?
Anecdotally, I know many people who used to use P2P software while in college (and poor) who buy everything they get now. My feeling is that the biggest factors at play here are quality and convenience. Once through college and in a job the time and risk of finding non-infected high-quality shared music is outweighed by the convenience and quality of buying the tracks from iTunes or Amazon. Very few of these studies I have seen account for any of these types of factors when drawing conclusions.
An example of silliness in the Jupiter report:
The majority of music sharers do not buy music, and they are nearly half as likely as music buyers to buy CDs in a high-street shop or from an online store.
First, 44% of music sharers buy CDs in a store. The report does not provide an aggregate figure of music sharers that buy music from any source, but it is hard to believe that fewer than 6% of music sharers buy music and do it exclusively online. The even sillier point is the CD purchase data. Music sharers are statistically equivalent to Internet users in buying CDs in stores (44% to 45%) and almost 50% more likely to purchase CDs online (17% to 12%). There is some funny math going on to get from the report's data to its conclusion.
I don't mean to advocate for file sharing, but the BS-o-meter goes off just about every time one of these "reports" comes out because of shoddy data gathering/reporting/analysis. Why are the recording industry-types surprised at the skepticism that (properly) surrounds the conclusions in these reports? Unfortunately the people that seem most likely to bite reports like this hook, line, and sinker are the ones responsible for enacting laws and policy.
