AfterDawn: News

Piracy outweighs online music sales

Despite the increasing popularity of legal music download services, such as iTunes, the online sales won't make up for the losses generated by piracy, according to a study by Jupiter Media.

The research firm estimates online music sales will be $800M this year in the United States. Earlier estimates of $5.1B revenues by 2007 have now been reduced to $3.3B by 2008.



"The industry is suffering from competition for entertainment dollars, changing demographics, the end of the CD upgrade cycle and piracy" said Lee Black, analyst for Jupiter Research.

According to the research, digital sales will account for 7% of the US market this year.

Source:
Guardian


Written by: Jari Ketola @ 30 Jul 2003 2:51

• Previous article

• Wireless Hi-Fi from Linksys

• Next article

• Sweden to outlaw peer-to-peer file swapping

• 12 comments

• tinfoil

  Piracy will never go away and it's time that the entertainment industry realises this. The software industry figured it out long ago.
  
  The best they can do is to stem the tide and these online services will certainly help.. Unless they all suck as bad as BuyMusic does.
  

  Digital Media and Music News
  http://music.tinfoil.net

  30.7.2003 05:12 #1

• Toiletman

  Well, what can I say? Of course piracy will never go away, IF there is a way to pirate stuff, which there always is.... ;)
  

  When you are on your deathbed, you will wonder, "Did I waste my life? Was it worth spending all that time on that?" Do not despair, no one has wasted their life. After all, you can only waste something if you throw it away. And you can't throw life away.

  30.7.2003 05:41 #2

• Ketola

  I wonder what sort of a figures you'd end up with if you added up all the album (CD and LP) and video (VHS and DVD) sales from both 1995 and 2000. I'm pretty sure the total sales were quite a bit larger in 2000. Atleast I put CDs and DVDs in the same category -- if I buy CDS, I'm not going to buy DVDs for a while, and vice versa.
  
  

  Jari Ketola
  Administrator
  http://www.AfterDawn.com
  

  30.7.2003 10:17 #3

• GrayArea

  Okay, I may be dating myself here. I used to put a lot of other people's albums (vinyl) onto cassette tape. A lot. I may have purchased a few of those records if not for the tapes, but only a few. These "losses" of CD sales seem to be based on estimates of the TOTAL number of files being shared. There's no way people would have purchased all that music even if P2P did not exist at all. Combine that with game sales (through the roof), increased CD prices in a bad economy, & crappy offerings from the major labels and I feel like P2P's impact on music sales is being extremely exaggerated.
  

  We mustn't lower ourselves to the level of those we loathe, lest we become loathsome ourselves.
  

  30.7.2003 10:57 #4

• rpeckhoff

  I agree with Gray Area, people pirate much more than they would ever buy. Heck people pirate more than the would ever use. Check out the people with 500 CDS of MP3's. Thats a heck of a lot of music. And I doubt they listen to half of it. Much less they would have bought 10% of it if they were forced to.

  30.7.2003 14:46 #5

• nato1200

  i think Grey Area and rpeckhoff got it exactly right. i have so much stuff that i would never buy if i couldn't have gotten it free from one source or another.

  31.7.2003 20:58 #6

• Shegax

  Grea area is perfectly rightm well see what happens to the Riaa in the future
  

  Shega
  (adrenaline Is the closest Total freedom)

  3.8.2003 04:59 #7

• lamp23

  Why are we kidding ourselves? Music SHOULD be free.
  And we all know why. If everybody had unlimited access to music the world would be a happier place for everyone. Funny thing is, it's not that hard to do and only extremely rich people would be losing money.

  4.8.2003 00:15 #8

• stangr

  y'all are full of sh*t. any one who takes free music is robbing hard working people out of money

  15.3.2004 06:22 #9

• djscoop

  this is still news to people? that piracy outweighs legal sales? I can't beleive that this is still headline news. Piracy will never go away. Hackers and programmers are way more computer savy than those damn RIAA and MPAA.

  16.3.2004 10:42 #10

• brian100

  Its strange that the people who pirate music & dvd's are treated with disgust, whereas the hi tech companies who produce hardware copying appliances never seem to take any of the blame. If the recording or dvd industry were serious about piracy surely they should sue these hi tech companies. Oh of course but that would be silly as theres so many conflicts of interest out there. ie SONY. (What hypocrits they are!!)
  
  I personally think that p2p sharing is a good idea in general. It introduces more music to more people, therefore the potential for music sales surely must be higher?? Its basically free advertising
  
  I may also add that i do not share files via p2p. Hence my knowledge of todays bands and artists are limited to say the least. This may turn into a worrying trend for the recording industry if all p2p sharing was deemed illegal

  16.3.2004 11:02 #11

• foneman

  i think brian is onto something...the same industry that is persecuting us for "stealing" will allow a company to make a ripoff of a new product. for example sony is now coming out with a new dvd writer 2.4x. do you think bose, and samsung aren't going to use that same exact idea with their name on it...these people just want money, end of story. it's your choice whether or not you want to support them.

  20.3.2004 09:16 #12