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Music piracy is down but still very much in play

latimes.com

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Re: Music piracy is down but still very much in play

#31

Post by toyg »

netcan wrote: post #10
yc1010 wrote: post #6

I am in Ireland, I wanted 1 single track (apparently there is no such thing as music shops or singles anymore, i feel old) So I went to Amazon.com found the track for $0.99 and went to pay, guess what "your credit card has to be issued by US bank" error, despite me having positive amazon.com gift balance with no need to use credit card. Fine so I went to amazon.co.uk, same track GBP 1.00 (notice the markup) and simil…

In fairness, I would say that this is an issue with money/banking/credit cards and the various regulatory frameworks in this area. It is remarkably difficult to just trade money in exchange for goods and services online. Between fraud, transaction costs, anti-"money laundering" requirements and general complexity the systems that actually exist are just not very good. If you fall outside the realm of a simple money-i…

> this is an issue with money/banking/credit cards and the various regulatory frameworks in this area

No, this is an issue with streams of bits being considered goods that have to be traded differently depending on the region, and that responsibility lies entirely with music distributors. If there was a single global license for selling a given piece of music, it wouldn't matter what you're buying, how you're buying it or where from.

Re: Music piracy is down but still very much in play

#32

Post by rawe »

EnderMB wrote: post #28

I wonder how many people will pirate Taylor Swift's music since she's exclusively linked to Apple Music? I'm willing to bet a lot of Spotify users will dust off uTorrent (or whatever people are using for torrents nowadays) and just download the album she has restricted her fans from listening to legally. It's all about ease of access, surely? The introduction of Apple Music is good for music, but if it means that Spo…

uTorrent turned evil, same way as sourceforge did.

Re: Music piracy is down but still very much in play

#33

Post by tjr »

toyg wrote: post #31
netcan wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, I would say that this is an issue with money/banking/credit cards and the various regulatory frameworks in this area. It is remarkably difficult to just trade money in exchange for goods and services online. Between fraud, transaction costs, anti-"money laundering" requirements and general complexity the systems that actually exist are just not very good. If you fall outside the realm of a simple money-i…

> this is an issue with money/banking/credit cards and the various regulatory frameworks in this area No, this is an issue with streams of bits being considered goods that have to be traded differently depending on the region, and that responsibility lies entirely with music distributors. If there was a single global license for selling a given piece of music, it wouldn't matter what you're buying, how you're buying…

Could be a territorial copyright issue. Mechanical license rights, in my experience, aren't global.

Re: Music piracy is down but still very much in play

#34

Post by bad_user »

cJ0th wrote: post #12
yc1010 wrote: post #6

I am in Ireland, I wanted 1 single track (apparently there is no such thing as music shops or singles anymore, i feel old) So I went to Amazon.com found the track for $0.99 and went to pay, guess what "your credit card has to be issued by US bank" error, despite me having positive amazon.com gift balance with no need to use credit card. Fine so I went to amazon.co.uk, same track GBP 1.00 (notice the markup) and simil…

> These music companies deserve to go extinct for wasting half an hour of a prospective customers time and putting up silly barriers. Let's face it, they don't want your type. Ownership is dying. It is much more profitable to renegotiate with the consumers that fear losing "their" music collection the price of a subscription service every once in a while.

Subscriptions don't work well for the long tail, artists that aren't extremely popular get pennies and people in SF and LA live in some sort of bubble, as subscriptions aren't that popular compared to personal music collections. IMHO, it's a passing trend, just like CDs and iPods. And don't get me wrong, as subscriptions are somewhat convenient, problem is they are convenient for personal usage and listening to music is often a group activity, with sharing without barriers and taking things offline being the norm.

Do you know why YouTube is so popular for listening to music? It's because of things like http://www.youtube-mp3.org/

Re: Music piracy is down but still very much in play

#35

Post by nothrabannosir »

EnderMB wrote: post #28

I wonder how many people will pirate Taylor Swift's music since she's exclusively linked to Apple Music? I'm willing to bet a lot of Spotify users will dust off uTorrent (or whatever people are using for torrents nowadays) and just download the album she has restricted her fans from listening to legally. It's all about ease of access, surely? The introduction of Apple Music is good for music, but if it means that Spo…

> ...the album she has restricted her fans from listening to legally.

Well, she is still making her music available online against a fair price. If you mean restriction in the sense of any restriction, then, yes, it's restricted. But so is Spotify, because for every service there is another one you don't publish on.

Miss Swift was not happy with Spotify's negotiating terms. Her not playing ball with Spotify should not automatically be considered "restricting her fans from listening to her music legally," even though that's a side-effect.

I'm not privy to the details of the negotiation, I don't know who's being unreasonable, if anyone. But just saying that she restricts her fans from listening to it, that implies it's her own fault and that people are in the right for just pirating it then.

Not really.

Re: Music piracy is down but still very much in play

#36

Post by Macha »

yc1010 wrote: post #6

I am in Ireland, I wanted 1 single track (apparently there is no such thing as music shops or singles anymore, i feel old) So I went to Amazon.com found the track for $0.99 and went to pay, guess what "your credit card has to be issued by US bank" error, despite me having positive amazon.com gift balance with no need to use credit card. Fine so I went to amazon.co.uk, same track GBP 1.00 (notice the markup) and simil…

Also, for anyone wondering why the parent poster didn't just use an Irish regional version of Amazon - there isn't one. amazon.ie is just a redirect to amazon.co.uk, and the UK site has been for Irish customers too for a long time (including options for euro currency, free delivery etc)

Re: Music piracy is down but still very much in play

#37

Post by majani »

cJ0th wrote: post #12
yc1010 wrote: post #6

I am in Ireland, I wanted 1 single track (apparently there is no such thing as music shops or singles anymore, i feel old) So I went to Amazon.com found the track for $0.99 and went to pay, guess what "your credit card has to be issued by US bank" error, despite me having positive amazon.com gift balance with no need to use credit card. Fine so I went to amazon.co.uk, same track GBP 1.00 (notice the markup) and simil…

> These music companies deserve to go extinct for wasting half an hour of a prospective customers time and putting up silly barriers. Let's face it, they don't want your type. Ownership is dying. It is much more profitable to renegotiate with the consumers that fear losing "their" music collection the price of a subscription service every once in a while.

It's not much more profitable to move to subscription model. According to Billboard's new measuring mechanisms, 1500 streams = 1 album sale. By that measure, only a handful of artists have gone 'platinum' in the streaming sense.

Music is never going back to the cassette/CD golden age of sales, but streaming seems like the best way to salvage the few paying customers left.

Re: Music piracy is down but still very much in play

#38

Post by andresmanz »

collyw wrote: post #14
andresmanz wrote: post #7

I legally download all the music I want for free without any effort. Because here we "pay for that music by buying a device". Too bad the wrong people receive that money. So I can't say that I like it, but on the other hand I barely download any music. It's maybe one track per month.

What country are you in?

I'm in Switzerland. It's OK to download music and movies for personal use, as long as you don't spread them yourself.

Re: Music piracy is down but still very much in play

#39

Post by RansomTime »

maccard wrote: post #11
yc1010 wrote: post #6

I am in Ireland, I wanted 1 single track (apparently there is no such thing as music shops or singles anymore, i feel old) So I went to Amazon.com found the track for $0.99 and went to pay, guess what "your credit card has to be issued by US bank" error, despite me having positive amazon.com gift balance with no need to use credit card. Fine so I went to amazon.co.uk, same track GBP 1.00 (notice the markup) and simil…

This is so true. I find it the same with BBC IPlayer - I live in the UK but travel home regularly, and have a 3 hour train journey. Despite having an active Sky subscription in the UK, and paying a TV licence in the UK, if I want to watch a show hosted on iPlayer there isn't any way to do it from Ireland. I normally end up having to download them before I go from other sources, which I hate doing..

You can download it directly from the BBC using get_iplayer

http://www.infradead.org/get_iplayer/html/get_iplayer.html

Re: Music piracy is down but still very much in play

#40

Post by rwmj »

J_Darnley wrote: post #26
yc1010 wrote: post #6

I am in Ireland, I wanted 1 single track (apparently there is no such thing as music shops or singles anymore, i feel old) So I went to Amazon.com found the track for $0.99 and went to pay, guess what "your credit card has to be issued by US bank" error, despite me having positive amazon.com gift balance with no need to use credit card. Fine so I went to amazon.co.uk, same track GBP 1.00 (notice the markup) and simil…

Belgium has similar problems. Frankly, the is the one place I want to see the EU actually take action and remove national sovereignty. This is supposed to be one marketplace so the EU needs to actually enforce some sort common market for digital goods. "You may not sell a product or service in one member state without the product or service being available to all member states."

The EU is actively trying to do this: http://ec.europa.eu/priorities/digital-single-market/
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