News

The rate of legal music downloading has stagnated over the past year and more users are turning to piracy to get their music fix, according to a British research survey released Monday that suggests the record industry must make buying legal music easier.

Although social networking sites such as Facebook.com and MySpace.com help increase music awareness, a reluctance to purchase legal music constrained by digital rights management, reduced fear of being prosecuted for downloading illegally and falling CD retail prices have fuelled the growth in piracy, according to Entertainment Media Research, a London-based research firm and Olswang, a United Kingdom-based entertainment law firm.

"The music industry is in a state of considerable flux," said Entertainment Media Research executive director Russell Hart in an interview. "The decline and value of the CD market is not being compensated for by the increasing growth and volume of the digital market."

In EMR's fourth annual Digital Music Survey, 1,700 people were polled online in the United Kingdom in the month of June. Findings suggest illegal music buying is higher than ever before, with 43 per cent claiming they downloading tracks without paying for them, an increase from 36 per cent last year and 40 per cent in 2005.

This year, only 33 per cent said the risk of being persecuted was enough of a deterrent to not download unauthorized tracks, compared with 42 per cent in 2006.

The findings also show 18 per cent — nearly one in five respondents — cited they planned on downloading more music, up from 8 per cent in 2006.

Although the poll is based in the U.K., Mr. Hart says that the data can be applicable anywhere in the developed world.

"Of all the major music markets, the U.K. has been least affected by piracy. Consumer behaviour and attitude toward music is pretty common around the developed world, so the basic lessons still apply," said Mr. Hart.

The best way of counteracting piracy, Mr. Hart says, is for the record industry to, "focus more on the quality of the music being released and spent more effort communicating the availability of the product targeted at a specific audience."

"Piracy can be reversed if there's a will to do so," Mr. Hart said.

However, the survey suggests a number of developments look promising to the future of the music industry. Out of 86 per cent of users polled that say they log on to social networking sites, 27 per cent use the website to discover new music and 17 per cent of state using such sites has had a "massive" or "big" impact on the way they purchase music. Also, two out of every five consumers that log on to social networking websites have embedded music into their profile.

A new potential revenue stream is emerging, with 10 per cent of users surveyed saying they would pay to see webcasts of live performances, with another 64 per cent interested saying they would not pay for them.

Also, the industry experiment to put music on USB devices, such as with The White Stripes' Icky Thump, seems to be yielding encouraging results. Only 8 per cent said they were not aware of the new format, with 58 per cent of people giving the format positive consumer interest.