By Tim Ferguson, 16 June 2008 13:03
NEWS
Young people are getting almost half of their music collection through illegal means.
Record industry artist and publisher group, British Music Rights (BMR), claims the average 14- to 24-year-old now has almost 900 illegal tracks each on their MP3 players.
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The average young person's MP3 player contains an average of 1,770 tracks, around half of which have not been paid for.
Almost two thirds (63 per cent) of respondents surveyed said they download music on peer-to-peer file sharing networks, while 42 per cent allow others to download their music.
More than half (58 per cent) admitted to copying music from friends' hard drives, while 95 per cent have copied music in some way.
However, the CD is still seen as a viable for this age group, with 60 per cent saying they will continue to buy the physical format.
But there is evidence users want a legal file sharing service and 80 per cent said they would even pay for the content.
Feargal Sharkey, former-Undertones frontman and now CEO of British Music Rights, said it's clear young people are as engaged in music as previous generations and are still prepared to pay for it.
But he added the research shows how dramatically music consumption has changed, so a key challenge is to build a mutually beneficial partnership between the music industry and technology organisations.
The University of Hertfordshire carried out the research - which was the largest academic survey of its kind - for BMR earlier this year.
Comments
There are 3 comments. Join the discussion
1. Karen Challinor
PIRACY101
Q - how to wipe out piracy overnight
A - make it uneconomic by dropping the price of the product
the margins on a CD or DVD are ridiculous with most of the profit going to the record label and very little to the artist
the label tells us this is so they can make risky undertakings by promoting up and coming artists but with the advent of the internet they now have a virtually cost free way of doing the same thing
the business model has changed but the industry has not adapted beyond raking in larger profits
2. Andrew Robb
The music industry should be very pleased that youngsters now pay for half their music collection. 30 years ago, many only played ripped cassettes.
3. Mark Hosey
You know, engineers and scientists work their backsides off designing and creating new products and services, or improving those already available, some of which are pointless but many of which society depends on or becomes dependent upon to the mutual benefit of all. However, they all work under contract for a fixed wage. Often the contract states that any patentable or copyrightable ideas they may have belong to the company and that they have no right to exploit those ideas themselves without the permission of their employers. How wrong is that? Musicians get royalties on all their creative works but engineers get a basic salary? I think all engineers should get royalties on all the creative products they are involved in designing and bringing to production. Fairs fair! Until then I couldn't give a monkeys about illegal downloads!