Could Pay-for-Play Replace Peer-to-Peer?

from the meaningless-studies dept

A new research study pretty much states the obvious when it comes to online music. If there were no free P2P file sharing programs out there, more people would be willing to sign up for pay services. Of course, it's still a small percentage (less than one-third) who would. Interestingly (and surprisingly, to me) more people said they would be willing to do pay-per-download than a subscription fee. I would have thought an "all you can eat" program would make more sense. Of the other findings, though, over half of the people surveyed didn't see anything morally wrong with downloading music, and 62% said they bought a CD after sampling songs from it via the internet. I always wonder about studies like this one, though, because it's so easy to have biased questions that push people towards a specific answer. "Do you share music with friends online?" and "Do you pirate copyrighted songs online?" may be asking the same thing, but could elicit very different answers...
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  1. identicon
    JimmyGantos, 5 Oct 2002 @ 7:45am

    The Music Industry Cds

    Why can't the music industry just sell single tracks online and the new .mp4 (aac) rate. I think a lot of people would be willing to get a quality like that for pennies on the dollar. Who needs a full CD with that 4 or 5 songs you never would buy normally. If the internet was ripping of so much business from the music industry, the music industry would have found way to make money off of it sooner. And let's remember that the CDs are marked up heavily. Why not let the consumer decide on the markup of a CD? After all they have been ripping us off for years.

    The record industry, should it screw up, will lose more and more customers to the internet and bands will start to sell from their own websites. This also can be applied to the movie biz... Imagine Tom Cruise... Why should he take $20 million from Paramount when he can make $200 milllion distributing it "Digitally" himself from a website.

    Lack of insite still stammers the entertainment and music industry. They're all going to lose their jobs...

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 7 Oct 2002 @ 12:07pm

    Could Pay-for-Play Replace Peer-to-Peer?

    Nope. Hollywood will try this and it will not be wildly successfull. Since it's Hollywoods right to be wildly successful the blame will fall on p2p. They will continue to buy their justice and artifically inflate costs to protect themselves. I wonder how long it will take before they sue Cisco. If you can get them to spend their money identifying and blocking mp3s they'd stand a chance.

    link to this | view in thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.