MySpace sends music piracy to all-time high
By Triston McIntyre
Many believe (foolishly) that large social networking site MySpace, which allows users and artists to play their favorite songs on their pages, keeps users from downloading what they can go to MySpace and hear. Not so; in fact a recent survey by Entertainment Media Research revealed that nearly half of all social networking site users partake in illegal downloading of music.
The survey, named the 2007 Digital Media Survey, polled a group of 1,700 ranging in age from 13-60, and the results were astounding: 86 percent of all internet users have utilized a social networking site within the last year.
Though MySpace provides an on-hands venue for previewing music of differing artists, it is changing the nature of legal and illegal online media for the worse, says the CEO of Entertainment Media Research, Russell Hart.
“Social networks are fundamentally changing the way we discover, purchase and use music,” said Hart. “The dynamics of democratisation, word of mouth recommendation and instant purchase challenge the established order and offer huge opportunities to forward-thinking businesses.”
Though that may sound like a positive change in a new era for the music industry, such is not the case; Hart continued that legal downloads are falling (down in growth from 40 percent in 2006 to only 15 percent in 2007) due to a distaste for “expensive” download prices, and a lack of fear of retribution from the industry.
It shows in the numbers: illegal downloads are up to 43 percent from last year’s 36 percent.
How can the music industry possible slow the growth of this rapidly-spreading epidemic of illegal downloading? The head of music at Olswang, John Enser, said:
“The music industry needs to embrace new opportunities being generated by the increasing popularity of music on social networking sites. Surfing these sites and discovering new music is widespread with the latest generation of online consumers but the process of actually purchasing the music needs to be made easier to encourage sales and develop this new market.”
But is that enough? If users can effectively obtain all the music they desire without charge (albeit underhandedly), will an increase in marketing fluidity truly slow the growing rate of piracy? Doubtful.
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July 30th, 2007
This is why I like Mercora so much. I don’t have to worry about the legality of the music there (because it’s legal). And besides that, there is so much music on there. It’s just a great site. Check them out.