Another Day, Another Study That Says 'Pirates' Are The Best Customers... This Time From HADOPI
from the damn-that-data dept
We've pointed out that a whole series of studies have all suggested that the biggest infringers of content online also tend to be the best customers of content, rather than just "freeloaders" who refuse to pay for content. Critics of these studies brush them off (without any evidence) by simply saying if that were true, then sales of content wouldn't have dropped so much in the music industry (other industries, it should be noted, have not seen such a drop-off). But that's misunderstanding (or misapplying) basic statistics. No one is saying that this means that file sharing automatically leads to more sales. But it does suggest that treating those people as just "freeloaders who just want stuff for free" is absolutely the wrong response. It shows that these people are willing to pay money if they're given a good reason to buy. The problem is that they're not.From a strategic standpoint, this impacts how one responds to increased "piracy." If you realize that they're merely underserved customers, the correct response is to come up with better business models. If the problem is that it's "free, free, free!" then perhaps enforcement could make some sense. But... all of the studies seem to suggest it's the former, rather than the latter... and thus the enforcement/stricter copyright responses won't help at all (as we've seen).
Joe Karaganis, from SSRC, points us to the news that there's been yet another such study... and this one is from HADOPI, itself. Yes, the French agency put together to kick people off the internet for file sharing did a study on the nature of unauthorized file sharing, too. Not surprisingly (and consistent with every other study we've seen on this topic), it found that those who spend a lot of money on content... were much, much, much more likely to also get content through unauthorized means. HADOPI released the results in a somewhat convoluted way (perhaps trying to downplay this result), but Karaganis reformatted the results to make this clear:
If piracy is a sampling and discovery tool for high spenders, then suppressing piracy could depress legal sales. If–as I’ll argue at more length in a subsequent post–we’re in a mostly zero-sum market in which consumers are maxed out on discretionary media expenditures, then enforcement won’t significantly expand but at best just cannibalize one media sector for another. Music, games, and movies, let’s say, competing for the same discretionary dollars–and all of them competing with rising, increasingly non-discretionary internet access and data charges. If we’re in this type of market, then HADOPI is just in the business of eliminating its best customers. Good luck with that business model.And suppressing the means of communication at the same time -- collateral damage for no good purpose. Brilliant!
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Filed Under: customers, file sharing, piracy, studies
Companies: hadopi
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/Sarcasm
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Pirates are the true fans. Without piracy, they would likely buy even more. The pirates may be big buyers as well, but would they have been even bigger buyers in the past, when they couldn't get everything for free?
After all, music sales are dropping every day, yet the number of comsumer music player devices goes up. Hmmm.
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Music plays on the radio, on various online services. It is easy to get exposed.
After all, I am assuming you don't just pirate random stuff. I am assuming you do it because someone recommended it to you. That would work equally well for actually buying it, or checking out a 30 second sample online, or watching the music video on MTV9 or whatever channel actually plays the videos now.
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Another anecdote: I did recently consider buying several movie soundtracks for movies that I've seen, so I knew I liked the music. But all I could get was a 30 second preview of all the songs. Movie soundtracks are notorious for some parts of any given song be awesome and other parts be just filler. So if I listen to the 30 second preview, is the part I'm listening to the only good part, or perhaps it's the only so-so part of an otherwise awesome track? I don't know. Am I going to buy those soundtracks. Maybe, but only after I hear the whole thing. In comes youtube. When I'm done listening to those tracks, I may or may not buy, depending on how much I like the full tracks. Now youtube could be legit, or it could be that I end up listening to some non-legit uploads. I don't care. If the recording industry wasn't going to be bothered to put up the songs on youtube and at least get the advertising revenue out of it, that's not my problem. Somebody else will do their job for them.
30 second samples are garbage.
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Today, after I record it form an legal streaming service and heard it repeatedly several times and didn't get bored after a couple of plays only them I got to a store to see what they can sell to me, I don't really want the CD I want to be dazzled by imaginative coffe mugs, t-shirts that will show to the world my preferences and if possible a CD box that have some very cool art in it, the music I can get from the radio for free or some legal streaming service why would I bother to get the CD since I don't even own a CD player I don't have a use for it, it will become as many others a problem if it is not to be used as a visual piece art.
Now the important part I do never ever buy anything from creeps that are part of the big labels or even indies that don't release their music under a CC Commons Sharealike type license, now I shop for liberal licenses that is more important to me than the music itself which I can live without it and been doing that for more than 10 years now, no money to the pricks of the recording industry.
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The labels might be the losing side in this shift of habits but this is no reason for them to push for draconian laws.
As for the citation needed comments, please, feel free to use Google and search for sources that include all the parts and not only the MAFIAA figures. I'm posting out of my own readings from articles here, at TF and from figures presented by the labels and other companies. If memory serves Nielsen had a quite comprehensive data set on this.
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dude, that is EVERY reason for them to push for more draconian laws.
You would too if you we're a extremely greedy billionaire who needs the new 400 foot yacht
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Perhaps one day the record labels will construct a time machine and go back to your precious past. In the mean time, let's look at strategies for the future, shall we?
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Before all this anti-piracy nonsense, I used to buy 5-10 CDs per month and I used to download everything I could get my grubby little internet fingers on. I also had XM radio that I paid something like $10/month for.
Now, I don't download music at all and I certainly don't PAY for it. I canceled XM radio, so now I just listen to free radio and accept the crap that comes to me via that avenue. My joy for music has evaporated. I think I've bought about 3 CDs in the last 5 years.
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Now, if it's not clearly in the public domain, I don't touch it. Even if it's independent. The joy of music is definately gone.
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Citation needed.
This is the latest in a long line of reports that used, you know, actual data. The conclusions presented are based on data, not wishful thinking. If you want to contradict the conclusions it draws, you need to provide data to support your assertions.
Simply saying "a group of people would likely do something" is not data, it's just a petulant child saying "nuh-uh!"
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Oh come on. Open your eyes and look. How come recorded music was an $XX billion dollar business, and today it's only half of that? At the same time, the number of people with devices to play recorded music has taken off, from computers to MP3 players to Ithing enabled cars, and all of them are walking around with memories full of music.
Did it just magically appear there?
The people who are pirating hard and buying some are very likely to be buying more without piracy, they want music. If they cannot get it for free, they would spend for it if they really wanted it.
Ninja: Please. Music sales are way down, only barely covered by increasing concert ticket prices. Recorded music sales are way, way off, and any reader of Techdirt knows it, because Mike repeats that face often enough. If you are going to make shit up, at least try to do it in areas that are up for debate.
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A single costs $0.99, while a full-fledged album used to cost $14.99.
I'm surprised that the industry has only been cut in half.
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We have more music now than we ever had before (take your eyes away from the mainstream and look at how much Jamendo has grown). If anyone is hurting it is the labels: the parasites that feed off the artist with their "creative accounting".
But you are correct on one point: music sales are down. That is easily explainable: people are tired of paying for non-tangible goods. I don't mind paying 60€ for a music player, but why the %&*+! would I pay that much for one CD? It's insane. I'd rather pirate it at that price. Who wouldn't? You had to be completely retarded to pay that much.
But artists (yes THE artists, not the labels) are compensating by making money out of things that you cannot copy or rip-off: concerts, merchandise, etc.
So, yeah. The music business is healthy. It's going through a minor cold, but they'll tough it out.
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Labels might have their revenues cut by half (MIGHT, please post their latest results and say that with a straight face, I dare you won't) and that's one big emphasizing might. But the money is flowing and the MUSIC market is more alive than ever. Except that it's much more independent from the labels.
"Music sales are way down, only barely covered by increasing concert ticket prices." The first part of this phrase cannot be true if the second is. Concert tickets are music sales. And while the mega hits (Lady Gaga, U2 and merry friends) are increasingly expensive there are plenty of alternatives of pretty cheap and good music. So maybe it's a crisis in the big businesses only while many smaller players are making much more? If I'm making this shit up I think I need to check if I'm still living in planet Earth because that happens to me on a pretty much weekly pace.
Or maybe you are living in your own Neverland unable to see reality.
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You answered your own question.
The money went elsewhere.
20 years ago, very few people had computers. Almost no one had a mobile phone. Video games were for kids, and certainly not all of them. Practically all discretionary entertainment spending went to recorded music and movies.
Now. Almost everyone has a computer. There are more mobile phones in the world than there are people - and many are now smart phones. Most males under 40 have some game console or pricey computer to play games - and gaming among females has risen dramatically. The amount of discretionary entertainment spending is the same (if anything, its less as the wealth disparity in this country has increased significantly in the same time period). So recorded music now has to compete with all those other things for the same amount of money. And as we've seen in the past, the amount of money spent on music related things has actually increased - its just that spent on recorded music is dropping rapidly.
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http://routenote.com/blog/the-music-industry-is-growing-believe-it-or-not/
Sales are up everywhere EXCEPT cd sales. The issue is that the record industrys profits are down because the money is spilling into other avenues.
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Studies and common sense suggests that you are more likely to buy after sampling. And a very practical reason for producers not offering more samples of scarce goods is the cost associated with each sample. "Piracy" is sampling that doesn't cost the producer anything in overhead.
Many have embraced "piracy" to greater profits than they ever had before. For example:
[wikipedia] >> Paulo Coelho is a strong advocate of spreading his books through peer-to-peer file sharing networks. A fan posted a Russian translation of one of his novels online. Sales of his book jumped from 3,000 to one million in three years, with no additional promotion or publicity from his publishers.
So believe what you want. Your beliefs are weak.
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What happened to the days of Aerosmith or Michael Jackson selling 10 tracks on a 12 track album as singles? If a band doesn't have that many good songs, make an EP or don't make an album at all until they have enough to fill an album. Plenty of huge touring acts get away with only releasing a studio album every 5-10 years.
Radio and later tape trading drove sales for years. They gave up trying to find a way to prosecute tape traders as pirates because they saw how it improved sales, not sure why they're hanging on so hard for digital piracy. The options as I see it :
1) Go back to vinyl. (Fine by me.)
2) Adopt the same attitude to older methods of sharing and look the other way as they rake in album and single sales.
3) Pressure the radio stations to play a bigger variety. The more people hear there, the less they need to pirate to sample.
4) Glen Danzig model, where you offer the downloads free on your own site, and sell CDs with awesome inserts and lyric and art booklet, and even more awesome stuff in limited edition boxed versions. Shift the perceived value of the CD sales off the music that can be gotten elsewhere and sell them something else they can't resist buying with the CD.
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[CITATION NEEDED]
Besides, pretty much everyone has already some music and pretty much all electronics device is capable of playing back music. Mmh.
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I don't know about anyone else, but since I already have my music library in digital format (ripped from CD's) I don't need to repurchase it for my new devices. So, yeah, it makes sense that revenue from repurchasing music in different formats has dropped.
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Consumer music player devices (Digital media devices that is) sale are increasing.
Oh look, hand in hand, non physiccal digital music sales going up.
Old technology physical media sales going down.
Look what happened is simple, CD's brought in digital media in a physical form and they were able to bump up the price over vinyl to pull down extra profit. Where did they pull it down from? Here and now, that's where it came from.
This new change from physical digital media to non physical delivery devices has none of the upside for the industry that vinyl to cd did. People are not having to replace their entire collections, why should they, they already own the digital media, they just have to format shift it so that's what they've done.
The drop in demand for physical media, is a blessing for the musicians. The vast majority of the cost of their music for the consumer was for the physical media, the transportation, breakages, staff costs etc etc.
Now if they sold tracks for 20c and albums for a dollar, they would be able to make the same money as they did before but their consumers could buy so much more of their and other creators music.
Obviously if the industry itself was insane, you would see a ridiculous situation where they try to charge roughly the same for the non physical media as they did for the old physical media with all it's extra and very large costs.
Oh...
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> they have been even bigger buyers in the past,
> when they couldn't get everything for free?
No. They would buy less in the past if they could sample first and find out what is crap and what isn't crap. It is probably a safe bet that they would only buy the non-crap.
> After all, music sales are dropping every day,
> yet the number of co[n]sumer music player devices
> goes up. Hmmm.
Yeah, Hmmmm.
Because people buy only the non-crap.
Even without any ability to listen before you buy, the internet makes it much easier for word to get around about what is crap.
Oh, right. But you want to get rid of "rogue sites" that might be "enablers" and "facilitators" rather than go after the actual pirates. Now I see why.
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Last I check, sales were at an all time high.. EVER
They're higher now, during a recession, than any other time in history.
omg.. evil pirates...
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People only have so much money to spend, the content industries need to work harder to attract that cash. At the moment, a lot of them are failing to recognise that their true competitors are not just in their own markets, they're the whole entertainment business.
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Re: yet the number of comsumer music player devices goes up
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Probably not, because most people are annoyed at the industry and are making a point at evading it.
And because those same pirates would never find themselves in a world where they couldn't get what they wanted for free, in the 60's 8-track tape sales exploded do you think people where using those things for legal purposes only?
BASF, 3DM and others made billions of dollars selling cassette tapes, VHS tapes and other recording medias, do you truly believe all those sales were to people obeying the law?
Piracy is and was massive. The thing before was that nobody could see it in real time happening.
Somehow you people keep ignoring these facts.
The industry sued everyone and their sales vanished, most of it in only one year, coincidentally the year the RIAA decided to stop suing others.
Piracy has occurred in a massive scale long before the internet but somehow now it is a bigger problem.
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With what money? People who stopped spending money on music didn't just stop spending that money. They spent it on other things instead. If you want that money back you're going to have to compete for it, and right now the recording industry is doing a terrible job of that.
As an aside to that, one way to guarantee people won't buy from you is to do things that people hate you for. That's one thing the recording industry is doing very well. It doesn't matter how justified you think these "anti-piracy" actions are, only the opinion of your potential customers matter. If I won the lottery tomorrow I still wouldn't give the big labels a single dollar if I could help it. They simply don't deserve it.
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I don't know how many times it needs to be repeated:
Music purchases are increasing.
Music profits are decreasing, but that's because the type of sales that have skyrocketed (online purchases of MP3's) are not as profitable as the type of sales that have plummeted (purchases of CD's and other physical products).
However, there is this:
Without piracy, they would likely buy even more.
That is a very real possibility - but so is the notion that piracy increases interest in music overall, leading them to value music more, thus increasing their willingness to pay for it.
It is impossible to prove what people would have done, so the only possible way to even judge this is to ask them. And when surveyed, the data actually support both conclusions - people say they would have bought music if they couldn't pirate it, but also that they have bought more music since they started file sharing.
Since the amount of music purchases (though not profits) has increased at roughly the same rate as piracy, I'd guess the latter has a larger effect, though of course correlation does not equal causation.
But even if what you say is true, it shows how certain responses to piracy should be avoided. For example, kicking them off the internet, or restricting their internet connection, will remove their ability to pirate. But it also removes their ability to purchase. You turn them from pirates and purchasers, into neither. Your customer base, then, consists only of those who don't pirate - who are the ones who spend less.
Of course, removing piracy won't make anyone's discretionary income go up - so any sales gained due to lack of ability to pirate, will also be lost in either competing industries (games, DVD's), the same industry (they'll buy a CD and not have enough to see the live show), or even the same business (they'll buy a Lady Gaga album instead of a Madonna album). That's not very important if you're interested solely in the recording industry, but it is important when considering the effect on the industry as a whole, and the economy overall.
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Yeah, that's pretty much the story of everyone who loves music, myself included.
The sad part is how many of the artists who are anti-piracy actually benefited from this. The classic example is Metallica. Their first two albums cracked the Billboard Top 200, despite the fact that there was a media blackout on the band. How did they do this? Through word-of-mouth - which means kids trading tapes of their records. Flash forward to 2000, and they're up in arms about Napster and those same kids "stealing" their music. To "steal" a phrase from Roger Ebert: "I'm safe on board. Pull up the life rope."
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Point to the study that says this. Most of these studies suggest that people are finding more to buy with piracy. Without it, they'd not know of the albums they're buying.
"music sales are dropping every day,"
False. CD sales are dropping, everything else is increasing.
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On the other hand, it increases sales for a lot of niche stuff that people would never have risked their money on before, because now people can give it a shot before they drop their money on it and discover new things.
So really, what piracy does is that it makes people spend their money on QUALITY instead of BRANDS. Yeah, this causes some losses for the big boys, but if they just put more work into their products, maybe this would change.
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Its possible people are listening to less music. Other forms of media have taken center stage.
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Jul 28th, 2011 @ 8:08am
Because internet is such good source of information, consumer now dont want to spend money on potential c**p.
Producers should think more quality of their movies and not wonder why moviesthat have number 3 4 5 etc in them title dont sell as good.
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Jul 28th, 2011 @ 8:08am
Because internet is such good source of information, consumer now dont want to spend money on potential c**p.
Producers should think more quality of their movies and not wonder why moviesthat have number 3 4 5 etc in them title dont sell as good.
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No contradiction between being "freeloader" and consumer.
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"After all, music sales are dropping every day, yet the number of comsumer music player devices goes up."
Cause Nielsen seems to know that's not the case
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/broken-records-music-sales-for-albums-and-di gital-tracks-up-in-first-half-of-2011/
And that's not even considering the growth of Concerts, and all the micro economy from Youtube/etc users.
But yeah, iPod sales are going up since 2001, and guess what? Since 2001, the record industry still thinks a CD can physically fit into an iPod.
Well, big news: IT CAN'T.
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...which is still technically against the law...
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How many metric shit tons to an Imperial shit ton? I'm American, so I need to know if my shit ton of CD's and LP's is bigger than yours. 'Cause, as an American, mine always needs to be bigger.
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Hadopi FTW
Let's hope HADOPI succeeds and chases those customers away to place where they can sample, like Jamendo and Magnatune.
That would be great news for artists on those services.
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Re: Hadopi FTW
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No. But a great deal of us bought hundreds of CDs in the last decade and have decades of cherished music in legal digital format now. My mp3s didn't magically appear in my player; I PUT them there after legally copying them from my CDs.
Being the cranky old man that I am, I haven't heard hardly any new music I wanted to buy.
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Typo
should be
rather than just "freetards" ...
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And polls don't trump stats. Recorded music sales got cut in half in ten years since Napster, yet iPods kept filling up. Why? Piracy.
All the propaganda on this site will never change that fact or have any effect. That's why laws and enforcement are aggresively moving forward.
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You see, when you prohibit something that virtually everyone does, you create a really crappy situation: black market access becomes big business, and enforcement becomes big business. Those two businesses feed off each other, constantly pushing each other to greater heights, while the legitimate businesses get absolutely nothing out of the deal.
Your moral argument is meaningless: attacking piracy accomplishes nothing.
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The other reason your thoughts fail, (besides the fact that not everyone pirates, not even close) is that they could be applied to any law. If people did the right thing all the time, every time, we wouldn't need any laws at all.
But that's not how life works, is it?
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So no, some people believe they can mandate conformity in the public space and change how people behave, not only that they want to change human nature, there is nothing more universal than sharing it tranverses cultural, ethic and religious barriers all over the world and those crazy people blinded by greed and self entitlement believe they can change the very thing that enable the human race to thrive.
Yep that is happening...only in your dreams LoL
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Just for fun, name some other laws where >50% of the general public ignores said law.
When the majority of the public ignores (disobeys) a law, that law should never have been passed.
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When the statute of Anne passed, it took something legal, and made it illegal. It just took a little longer for the population at large to realize what an epic fail copyright actually was.
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And that's the FREAKING POINT! Change the business model, and you'll see revenue growth again, from a lot of people that are not not paying *at all*, just as how iTunes made many Napster users to pay, because it was easier and convenient, and they didn't have to buy full albums to get the songs they wanted. It was a dramatic change of business model, but it still worked!
It seems the labels simply don't understand basic economics. A lot of people simply don't see the value in a "digital" song as they do anymore. So either adapt to serve these people, or don't get surprised when they pirate the songs. A few lawsuits here and there won't change anything. They've been trying for a decade this strategy, and what did that give them? More piracy.
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It was something like 10 billion dollars from one year to the other LoL
Not even piracy could explain that, but public backlash explains why the industry is so desperate to find proxies to do their dirty work for them.
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FTFY
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Did you also noticed that the more people spend the more they pirate?
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Including people who buy a *lot* of legal music. Your response to that is to cut them off, barring them from buying legal music online (which is increasingly the only way people buy music). Your cunning plan, thought it through you have not.
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I had since grown up, went to college, and got a good job.
I continue to watch almost every single movie released. However, now that I have a job and a different lifestyle. I use Redbox, Netflix, Hulu a lot. I also go to the movie theater almost weekly, albeit it might be $5 during weekdays or Saturday morning and not the $10-15 primetime costs. I haven't downloaded a movie in over 4+ years. I am a huge spender of movies nowadays.
I ask people who aren't really into movies and those who are.
All my friends who are big into movies, have pirated movies in the past and bought movies or go to theaters.
Those who aren't into movies, have not ever downloaded movies, yet they never purchase a movie or tickets.
I ask them if they simply don't like movies, and they say they do, but can't afford it or never really got into it because they couldnt afford to watch many. They also admit they don't know how to download movies off the internet.(though this reason is dwindling with more and more easy & available sources)
I can't honestly say its a direct cause and effect, as it could simply be the personality type. But Id like to think that downloading movies made me develop a habit of watching new releases and enjoying movies that it turned me into a big spender nowadays.
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Almost everyone i knew had "chipped" versions of the original Playstation. It became the most popular console because there were no other alternatives on the N64.
When the PS2 came out, a LOT less people could chip their machines, but the brand loyality was there after years of playing their playstations.
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The graph could be a lot better
It emphasizes relatively unimportant facts -- a histogram showing the distribution of "licit" media consumption. The secondary element is a histogram of "illicit" media consumption. Neither is what the article is about.
The thing you _wanted_ to communicate was that the percentage of illicit to licit use is increasing as we go to the right side of the chart.
To figure _this_ out, I have to mentally divide graphical bars of varying lengths (which may even be subject to optical illusion). As a result, the chart really doesn't help your point much. Just tabulating the numbers would probably be more effective.
But what would be a much better representation is to use a simple bar chart of the _percent illicit/licit use_ against the existing independent axis. This would normalize out the distribution information (which isn't very important), and make the relevant point (bars get bigger to the right) leap out at the reader.
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Re: The graph could be a lot better
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"What it shows is that those that spend zero on music pirate more than those that supposedly spend the most on music"
I guess what you mean is: "there are more people who spend no money on music and also pirate than there are people who spend lots on music and also pirate" but that is a nonsensical comparison because the group that spends no money is already so much bigger than the group that spends the most money.
Basically it's like saying "There are more two-legged murderers than one-legged murderers." True, but not a very useful observation.
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It says what is says: more people that spent zero on music pirated than those that spent the most on music.
The exact opposite of what the world-class buffoon Mike Masnick said.
And you can't refute that.
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What you are saying is true but completely meaningless. I'm not sure how to explain it to you. It's exactly like what I said: you are not accounting for the comparative sizes of the groups, so you might as well be saying "there are more two-legged murderers than one-legged murderers"
Is it TRUE? Yes. Does it tell you ANYTHING about the relationship between murder and number of legs? No.
If you can't grasp that, it's no wonder you can't understand the sort of stuff Techdirt discusses.
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Wanna try and refute that also?
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You have literally just said the exact opposite of what this graph shows.
It shows that those who spent the MOST pirated the MOST, and those who spent the LEAST also pirated the LEAST. You see, it's about proportions not totals. If you make it about totals, you draw totally specious and meaningless conclusions.
It's astonishing to me that you don't understand this.
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Let's say you take a room full of 100 people, and divide them based on whether or not they are wearing a red sweater. Let's say that 10 of them have red sweaters on, so you move them over to one side of the room.
Now you ask everyone in both groups what their favourite colour is. A lot of the people in red sweaters will probably say red: let's say 7 out of the 10 say red.
Now, of the other 90, there are going to be plenty of people whose favourite colour is red too, even though they aren't wearing a red sweater that day. So let's say 15 of those 90 people say that red is their favourite colour too.
We now have 7 out of 10 people in red sweaters saying red is their favourite, and 15 out of 90 in other colours saying red is their favourite. What conclusion can we draw? That there is a correlation between liking red and wearing red.
By YOUR method, we wouldn't conclude that. Instead, you would say: "There are twice as many non-red-lovers wearing red! Thus NOT liking red causes you to wear more red!"
Do you see now how stupid that is?
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It shows that those who spent the MOST pirated the MOST, and those who spent the LEAST also pirated the LEAST.
The people that spent the most accounted for a mere 7% of the total surveyed. So just because they pirated more than they bought, means a whopping zilch in the aggregate. The people that spent nothing, still pirated more than those that bought the most. That's where the problem lies.
Try this; you're Canadian, it might help you a little:
http://piracy.ssrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/HADOPI-high-spenders.png
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Why don't you pay attention to what you post?
That graphic shows clearly that most of the people who pirate are also the people who buy something LoL
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Yes there are more people that pirate that dont buy than spend over 100euros a month. So? There are more people that dont buy music than people spend more than 100euros a month. But the % of those people that are pirates goes up the more people spend.
The majority of people that don't buy music are not pirates. The majority of people that spend a lot of money on music are pirates!!! get it?
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It's not an "analogy" dude - it's a statistical example to attempt to get you to understand a basic statistical principle. I'm am not trying to draw any connection between red sweaters and piracy (that would be an analogy) I am trying to show you how hilariously flawed your understanding of statistics is.
The fact that you still don't get this is utterly flabbergasting. A seventh-grader could read my example and understand the point I am making about the graph - but you continue to ignore it. But then, a seventh-grader would understand how to use the word "analogy" properly too, so I guess we know where we stand with you.
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- There are more brown-haired pirates than red-haired pirates.
- More pirates vacation in Las Vegas than in Toronto
- There are more two-legged pirates than one-legged pirates (discounting of course real pirates, since then we'd have to adjust for peg-legs)
When your method of analysis can result in virtually unlimited false correlations, it is not a very good one.
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The people who spent nothing, were also more likely to engage solely in licit (legal) use.
So, by your logic, licit use causes people to pay nothing.
See the problem?
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It could be that the non-spenders only pirate 1 album a year and the major spenders pirates hundreds, or the inverse could be true but this graph does have information to make a guess or inference either way.
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Want to try and refute that dumbass?
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If the number of people who expend make up 5% of the total 4% pirate and then buy something and 1% never buys anything in that bracket, which clearly shows that the people who expend the most is using piracy as a way to find what they want.
Which means you either don't understand what the statistical numbers there mean or is trying to distort them.
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Piracy aside, this study shows there are more people who spend zero on music than who spend the most on music - significantly more. You are ignoring the proportion of those who pirate, and focusing on the absolute number.
When you do that, you can draw all sorts of wacky conclusions. It's likely that, in terms of gross number of people, the group that spends zero on music also includes more people with red hair, more people with bad backs and more people with pet snakes than the group that spends the most - but none of that means anything.
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He ignores the the opposite lesson 16% of respondents dont pirate and dont but anything only 2% of respondents dont pirate and spend over 100 euros. So non-pirates are people who don't buy or listen to a lot of music.
See what you are missing AC? More none-pirates buy no music than pirates. Less none-pirates spend money on music than pirates. Also the vast majority of the people that do spend a lot of money are pirates! Every time you go into a higher category of music purchasers the % of pirates increase!
That graph says the more music you buy the more likely you are a pirate and people who don't pirate and LESS likely to buy music. Therefore pirates=music lovers AND the industries best customers. Ask your math teacher to explain it to you if you still don't get it. The conclusion you draw is meaningless.
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the percentage of pirates in the non-buyer category is 8 out of 25 =~30%
the precentage of pirates in the people who spend the most category is 5 of 7=~68%
The % of pirates in each category increases as more money is spent.
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No. You're not even coming close to reading that correctly. Look at the graph I posted. Each of the 3 bars is a *separate* percentage of 5 percentages that add up to 100% and are unrelated to each other.
This is a hilarious conversation.
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But you're too stupid to run and hide like the other tards did because you swallow whatever you're told here without thinking first.
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Its quite simple. If you look at that one category(people who don't buy), according to this graph that category was 25% of respondents. Of that 25% 8 or maybe 9% are pirates the rest are not. 8% is ~ a third of 25% so pirates make up a 3rd of that category. The category that buys the most is either 6 or 7% of respondents the majority of those are pirates. Its not that hard to understand.
Your graph shows that 18% of the people that were polled that are pirates dont buy any music, while 32% of non-pirates don't buy music. But does not allow for a comparison between groups because as you said each set of bars adds to 100 and we don't know how big the two groups are in proportion to each other.
Either graph, any way you slice it, pirates are more likely to buy music and the more music you buy the more likely your a pirate. And if you don't buy any music its more likely that you are a non-pirate than are one.
Ask your math teacher when grade school starts up in few weeks, I'm sure he can explain graphs and statistical analysis to you.
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No. It shows that people who pirate more are more likely to spend money across all spending ranges than people who do not pirate.
For example: licit users are equally likely to spend 20-30 Euros/moth, 1-19 Euros/month, and nothing at all. On the other hand, illicit users are more likely to spend 1-19 Euros/month, and even more likely to spend 20-30 Euros/month.
The number of illicit users in either the 19-20 range, the 20-30 range, or the 30-99 range, are larger than the number of illicit users who spend nothing. That is not true of licit users.
Considering only the number of illicit users, the only range that is smaller than people who purchased nothing, is the range of people who spent >100 Euros/month. And within that range, the percentage of persons who are also pirates is greater than in any other range.
There is no question: people who pirate spend more on music. That is the only conclusion you could possibly reach from this data.
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Yes... that's a much better chart in highlighting the point. Can't wait to see how the statistically ignorant folks above explain that one away.
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What's remarkable about this study is how consistent it is with other studies. Perhaps I should fire up the ol' Excel (or Calc) and do a cross-comparison.
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That would be awesome if we had a cross-comparison across all of these studies... if you do that, let me know...
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13 years!
Not a fraking dime I spent on music from the labels and creepy indie fronts.
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Self-supplied data
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There's no way to distort the data to make it say what you want it to, so it MUST be lies. There couldn't be another explanation.
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