Pirates Buy More Music. Heads Asplode.

[Vincent Ferrari]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/04/21/study.on.piracy.and.music/' target='_blank'>http://www.electronista.com/article...racy.and.music/</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"Despite a common perception that pirating music decreases sales, a new study published by Norway's Aftenposten this week suggests an opposite effect. Conducted by the BI Norwegian School of Management, the research finds that those between who frequently download music through file sharing services are 10 times more likely to buy music than those that cling only to legal purchases. It also notes that those between the ages of 15 and 20 are more likely to buy songs through download stores like iTunes than CDs."</em></p><p><img height="294" src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/at/auto/1240404244.usr18053.jpg" width="227" /></p><p>Could someone please loudly call Bravo Sierra on this stupidity?&nbsp; Pirates buy more?&nbsp; Who the hell did this study?&nbsp; Pirate's Bay's Lawyers?&nbsp; And what are they buying?&nbsp; Did anyone even bother to ask that question?</p><p>I'm so sick of pirates justifying their behavior.&nbsp; Face it; you're stealing music.&nbsp; Justify it any way you want but if there's music on your iPhone or iPod that's for sale and you didn't pay for it, you stole it; end of story.&nbsp; And as for "buying more," that's a load too, because every swiped item on your iPhone / iPod is a song you didn't buy.</p><p>Next thing you know, we'll be hearing about how car thieves buy more cars.</p>

[emuelle1]

I can't stop laughing. Great logic: car thieves are good for the auto industry. That's a headline I'd love to see.

Of course, considering how familiar the music industry is with social media and the Internet, they very well could have run that study and come to that very conclusion.

It was probably a a study done by Congress, an organization that believes it can spend it's way out of debt.

[jdmichal]

Here's the original article: http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/04/study-pirates-buy-tons-more-music-than-average-folks.ars

Also, another, this one from Canada and sponsored by the CRIA: http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2006/03/6418.ars

Honestly I'm not surprized, and I agree with the ArsTechnica author:

Rogstad's dismissal of the findings don't take into account that the online music model has dramatically changed how consumers buy music. Instead of selling a huge volume of full albums—the physical media model—the record labels are now selling a huge volume of individual, cherry-picked tracks. It's no secret that the old album format is in dire straits thanks to online music, which is a large part of why overall music revenue is going down.

But the bottom line is, how can you argue with the numbers? I agree that yes, these downloads are illegal. But what these studies are saying is that the whole fight against it is pretty silly, even from the financial perspective, which is the only one that should even matter to a money-making entity.