Yet Another Study: 'Pirates' Are Actually Industry's Best Customers
from the again-and-again-and-again dept
We've already seen a bunch of nearly identical studies, but it's worth pointing out that there's yet another study coming out this week that says that those involved in file sharing also tend to be the best customers of the entertainment industry. Now, it's worth taking the study with at least some grains of salt, given that it was funded by Vuze, a company trying to sell licensed videos via BitTorrent and has had trouble getting content companies to sign on. However, given how many other studies have said the same thing, can we finally put to rest the idea that those who file share "aren't customers" as many in the entertainment industry insist? They do tend to be customers, and frequent ones as multiple studies have now shown. The issue is just that they also file share, meaning many file share, in part, to find out what's worth buying. So the focus should be (once again) on giving them reasons to buy rather than trying to stomp out file sharing.![Hide This Hide this](https://ii.techdirt.com/s/t/i/topclose.png)
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This just goes to show that studies show what the researchers wanted them to show before they were conducted.
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Out of 1200 "average" internet users, 770 just happened to use Vuse? The other 430 must have been someone granny and the guy down the road that only uses the net to watch porn.
How did they establish the average internet user?
This study makes the Conference Board of Canada look honest.
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Anecdotal Evidence
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I think file sharers such as myself scare the record industry because it keeps them honest, I can hear how much good music there is out there and only choose to buy the good quality stuff that takes time and energy and love to produce. They don't want this. They want you to hear as little music as possible, so you will not know any better when you buy the latest solid gold turd they want to shove down your throat. A Britney Spears record is a prepackaged product and is easy to churn out from the cesspool that is the modern day recording industry, whereas a Pink Floyd record takes skill, years of pre-production, talent, thought, love, energy, and is much more difficult to create. The record industry wants you to be happy with Britney Spears, but once you hear enough music you will demand Pink Floyd, and this will hurt their bottom end, so they want to hurt YOUR bottom end instead (dirty pun intended).
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You mean WERE
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You might be close...I'd concede that they do whatever they can to sample (hear, see, use, etc..) for free, but that doesn't mean it stops there. A friend of mine will download almost every movie he can find, but if any of them are good enough for him to want to watch repeatedly, he makes it a point to go buy the real DVD.
Also to be noted, it's only for movies of questionable quality. Wolverine, he wanted NOTHING to do with the leaked copy because he didn't want anything to spoil his theater experience for that one. Pineapple Express, he actually saw that in the theater, AND downloaded it so he could watch it again at home before the DVD came out, THEN BOUGHT THE DVD!
Anyone that tries to argue that nothing good comes of file sharing/piracy, is clueless.
Why do you think the movie rental business has done so well historically?? People have been burned by high movie ticket and DVD prices, for crappy movies (and music), for way too long to just accept what the *IAA's are trying to force upon us.
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The real question should be...
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If they don't have the money to buy anyway, the industry isn't losing anything there.
People who buy music will buy more music if they hear more music they like. MTV and radio don't expose people to more than a couple handfuls of new songs a month. Some legal internet radio (like WOXY) does a good job of upping those numbers (and I bought almost a CD a day when I was listening to that station regularly), but that's still dependent on matching the station to the listener. File sharing gives everyone access to (most) anything they want to hear.
The argument that it stops people buying albums because they'll find out there is only one good song is partially false. Many people like me won't buy a CD until we hear more tracks because we inherently distrust the single to represent the album anymore.
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Re: The real question should be...
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Until the model of the industry changes.....
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It's amazing how things look different!
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People only spend money they have
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Re: Anecdotal Evidence
If he has any lolcatporn that would be great too.
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Re: People only spend money they have
So if you think these people are buying any, I think you are kidding yourself. In fact, the Canadian study that Mike has pointed to in the past actually showed that if you removed all the file traders from the mix, there would be only a negligible change in the net sales. Remember, a significant part of the "internet users" do not buy any music or buy any DVDs. The true comparison would be to active media buyers. In the end, it was shown that the downloaders didn't really buy much more than anyone else, and considering they would be considered the most active fans / music consumers, their buy rate was lower than you would think for the top 20% of music / movie consumers.
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Well I don't buy...
Personally, if the RIAA and MIAA got together and sold downloads (using torrents, for speed) I would possibly buy it, because I really dont need to pay for the physical DVD, case, and anti-pirate tax.
I dont think its stealing, rather, not paying.
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Try before I buy..
I own over 1000 CD's AND DVD's ... some of it's crap (pre-internet) but most of it is quality, because I was able to have a look/listen and see if it was a worthwhile purchase or not.
Even though I OWN more media than anyone I know personally, and probably a lot more than the average person, I'm still labeled a 'pirate' ...
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You guys are nuts
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