Study finds pirates 10 times more likely to buy music

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/apr/21/study-finds-pirates-buy-more-music

by quoderat • 17 years ago

58 35 17 years ago

guardian.co.uk

This isn't really news. There have been reports like this since Napster. The Recording Industry ignores them and the media soon forgets.

quoderat2• 17 years ago

I thought it was news because every time someone posts about The Pirate Bay, etc, and someone says, "Piracy increases sales of most media," someone always comes back (it happened with the last major TPB thread on HN) with, "But no study has ever shown that!"

Even though there are quite a few of them, and this recent one.

jimbokun• 17 years ago

I didn't say "But no study has ever shown that!" but did ask "Has any study ever shown that? I would like to know the answer (and am too lazy to Google it)."

I appreciate you posting this to Hacker News, answering the question (even if not specifically for my benefit). Thanks!

trickjarrett2• 17 years ago

Sorry, I wasn't commenting to say your post wasn't HN material it is. More of a commentary on the repeated findings and studies that come and say the same thing.

tvon3• 17 years ago

So far as I can tell, this study shows that freely available music increases sales. There is no indication that piracy increases sales.

I have yet to see a study that takes "freely available" vs "pirated" into account, and that takes into account that there is a certain barrier to buying music online and p2p-ers have already overcome that barrier. Until such a study is made, I don't see how we can really say anything has been proven.

(edited for tone, I was being a bit argumentative)

christofd• 17 years ago

Damn, I thought they were talking about 'real pirates'. Arrrr, matey...

masomenos• 17 years ago

likewise.

Now that actual crime-on-the-seas piracy is a going concern, there's even more reason to stop using the term for filesharing.

Dilpil• 17 years ago

Study finds hardcore music fans 10 times more likely to pirate music.

mkyc• 17 years ago

I get the feeling that Thomas Bayes would disagree with you. Sorry that I can't be more precise.

tvon3• 17 years ago

> Researchers found that those who downloaded "free" music – whether from lawful or seedy sources – were also 10 times more likely to pay for music.

So if you download the iTunes free track of the week, you're 10 times more likely to pay for music.

tptacek2• 17 years ago

The original article, an autotranslation, was actually more informative than this, and included the gem of a detail that the survey used deliberately avoided wording that suggested "illegal" downloading.

In other words, this survey uncovered the shocking fact that people who had downloaded music were 10x more likely to pay to download music than people who never downloaded at all.

soldarnal2• 17 years ago

It's not as bad as you make it sound. There is no way for your "shocking fact" to be true, since definitionally people who have never downloaded anything have never paid to download anything either (people that pay for a download and for some reason never complete it notwithstanding). The ratio, therefore, would really be undefined, rather than 10:1.

The real inference, given what you say about the original article, is that people who obtain music online, whether by means of purchase or not, are ten times more likely to obtain music by means of purchase than those who never obtain music online. Certainly not as perhaps interesting a finding as the title, but neither as vapid as your summary.

tptacek2• 17 years ago

You think maybe you could track down and read the original before making inferences based on my vapid summary? I'm interested in whether you still think I'm off base here.

rjurney3• 17 years ago

I haven't bit torrented any music or movies in a long time. Last week I really wanted to see the sequel to a documentary I had just viewed on Youtube. Its not available on Youtube, so I went to find it for purchase online. Its not on iTunes or anywhere else for purchase.

Bit torrent really is often the most convenient way to get music/movies. I want to pay to download this movie, but I can't.

blhack2• 17 years ago

DING

Torrents have become to much work. Maybe I have just been "out of the scene" or whatever for too long... In the days of suprnova, the front page would be filled with albums or movies with plenty of seeds and MODERATORS that removed torrents that contained crap or trojans. Bittorrent now is as bad as kazaa (if that is even still around).

I buy TONS of music...mostly bands that I found back in the suprnova days, actually, and I buy most of it on iTunes...

I'm at work...dealing with the idiots at the pirate bay is too much of a pain in the ass and not worth the $9 an album costs on iTunes.

As soon as somebody comes out with something better, I'll migrate to that.

You're exactly right, it is all about ease of use. Using torrents used to be easier than going to the music store. That is no longer the case.

Although....there is still IRC ;-)

chris112• 17 years ago

There are always private sites, eg: waffles and what.

Quality is good, and it is easy to find new independent artists.

tracy• 17 years ago

No you don't want to pay. You say you do, but if you walked by a street and two guys stood there, one guy offering you a DVD for free and not saying a word, and the other guy yelling at you to buy the very same DVD from him, you'd take the free one.

You don't want to pay for the movie, and if you really think that, you're lying to yourself.

kingnothing2• 17 years ago

I don't think that it's fair for you to make that assumption. I believe many people have the desire to support people who make great things in order to reward them for what they have accomplished and to help inspire them to continue to do so by showing them that their passion is of value to others.

rjurney3• 17 years ago

That is not true. If that were true, I would have gone straight to bit torrent instead of straight to iTunes, and then google shopping.

What I don't want to do is go looking for it at the store or wait on shipping. I want to get it digitally.

rjurney3• 17 years ago

Just to further illustrate my point... I just paid $8 to download another documentary on the same topic. It was on streamburst.tv and easy as pie.

ShabbyDoo3• 17 years ago

How is causation shown? Isn't it most likely that those most into music both download more music and buy more of it on physical media?

ShabbyDoo3• 17 years ago

Ummm...downmodded for what? If the study doesn't claim the relationship to be causal (downloading causes buying), then its uninteresting as it doesn't support anyone's position.

There was no indication that the study controlled for an individual's interest level in music (overall amount consumed). So, if we presume the study to simply examine the correlation of two binary variables (downloaded_at_least_1x and bought_at_least_1x), the results could be explained if most of those polled did not download or buy music or did both. Am I thinking about this correctly?

ShabbyDoo3• 17 years ago

Sorry, this was at 0 when I replied to myself.

kingnothing2• 17 years ago

I recently prepared a presentation about copyright infringement... In store music sales are at their lowest point in the last decade. The RIAA derives a huge portion of its income from paid-for downloaded music these days and not so much from record sales.

tvon3• 17 years ago

Note: better coverage of the same (I think) study on Ars:

http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/04/study-pirates-buy-...

ghostz00• 17 years ago

Of course your 10 times more likely to buy music, because your looking for it. But I find it hard to believe that if you pirate music you are more likely to buy the album. I understand the "try before you buy" thought. But there are easier ways to preview music than just pirating it. There is Itunes, Amazon, and a ton of other music services you could use.

dexen• 17 years ago

Study finds `most people who are likely to buy music want to download it quickly, too' or perhaps `people who don't know how to download music aren't likely to do anything with the music at all'

The set of people buying music often, and people downloading are too much overlapped just because of the vast popularity of both buying and downloading to find any meaningful correlation between the sets. IMnsHO.

Pistos2• 17 years ago

> Researchers found that those who downloaded "free" music – whether from lawful or seedy sources – were also 10 times more likely to pay for music.

10 times more likely to pay for music they've acquired, or 10 times more likely to buy music, period? More explicit data is needed. Example: The pirates acquire 10000 songs; pay for 100 of them (1%). The non-pirates acquire 10 songs, pay for 10 (100%). "The pirates have paid for ten times as many as the non pirates."

But the results can swing the other way: Example: The pirates acquire 100 songs, pay for 1 of them (same 1%). Non-pirates acquire 10, pay for 10 (same 100%). Suddenly: "The non-pirates have paid for ten times as many as the pirates."

So, simply by getting more pirate respondents to participate in your study, you can manipulate the result increasingly in favour of piracy.

We need to see the data to be able to determine whether they really corroborate the conclusion.

weegee• 17 years ago

they're also 10 times more likely to say "shiver me timbers" when prompted.

actually I have downloaded music a lot in the past, from allofmp3.com and mp3sparks.com, and if I like it enough I do buy the actual CD because I want the complete package. Some music I purchased online through the Apple iTunes music store was so bad I wished I could return it. But no returns. Every CD store I know of will at least give you store credit.

burke• 17 years ago

> Wisely, the study did not rely on music pirates' honesty. Researchers asked music buyers to prove that they had proof of purchase.

I haven't read exactly how this study was conducted, but it might be worth noting that some pirates would feel they have something to prove, and be more likely to comply with the request for proof.

Study finds pirates 10 times more likely to buy music

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