music piracy Music Piracy Triggers Significant Losses, EU Study Shows

[Reefa]

Quote

New research published by the European Union Intellectual Property Office shows that piracy hurts both digital and physical music sales. In EU countries the total losses are roughly 5% of yearly revenues, which equals €170 million. In addition, piracy also triggers secondary losses for governments and the public sector.

 

 

 

For more than a decade researchers have been looking into the effects of online music piracy on the revenues of the record industry, with mixed results.

 

Both positive or negative effects have been reported, often varying based on the type of artist, music genre and media, among other variables.

 

That said, research has more often found that piracy hurts overall music sales, and an extensive new report from the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) confirms this trend.

 

The new study uses an elaborate model to quantify the effect of piracy on music sales, which it puts at 5.2% for the EU as a whole in 2014. This means that piracy resulted in €170 million in lost revenue across the EU.

 

The effects on digital sales are the most pronounced, €113 million compared to €57 million for physical products.

 

In addition to the direct effect on the music industry, there is also a secondary loss of €166 million in other sectors, and a €63 million loss in government revenue through direct and indirect taxes. The study doesn’t look at any positive effects, such as a possible increase in media player sales.

 

 

 

Interestingly, the estimated piracy losses are not equal across the EU. In absolute numbers they are the highest in the UK, with €48.6 in direct losses. This makes sense as it’s one of the largest music markets.

 

Relatively speaking the piracy effects are the most pronounced in Spain and Greece, with losses of 8.2% and 8% respectively. Croatia and Hungary are least affected, with both under 4%.

 

 

It is worth noting that the reported lost sales are a the expected additional revenue if people wouldn’t have pirated the music. It doesn’t count every pirated track as a lost sale, nor does it estimate the potential revenue if piracy wouldn’t exist at all.

 

Commenting on the results, EUIPO’s Executive Director António Campinos says that the current findings offer additional evidence in the ongoing piracy debate.

 

“The question of whether piracy reduces or increases sales of recorded music has been the subject of many studies with contradictory results,” he says.

 

“Our study’s results are in line with the prevailing consensus and find that piracy reduces the revenue of legitimate industry in both digital and physical formats,” Campinos adds.

 

Interestingly, the findings presented this week contradict an earlier EU study which revealed that online piracy doesn’t hurt digital music revenues. So, whether this week’s study will be the end of the ongoing debate about the effects of piracy remains to be seen.

 

source

 

[davmil]

I'd say this number was rather conservative.  170M is just what they can prove.

[RejZoR]

I frankly don't give a fuck. I do buy music from indie authors like Veela or Moog from mighty Car Mods or slightly less indie authors like Susana (though I've experienced similar BS for her when trying to buy her CD's from Amazon UK, because we don't have any frigging Amazon in my country), because I can pay with PayPal/Credit card and get the "product" in unlimited MP3 form. I have zero intention on buying music under some proprietary locked down garbage or even worse, the fact these whining bitches don't even offer services to us. Like Spotify for example. Guess what, I live in the center of Europe and yet we still don't have Spotify available. Pandora? Hahaha, nope. And those services that are available, they have a crappy selection of "products". Just like for example Netflix which only has a small portion of what they offer in the states. Copyright issues and other licensing crap, I just don't give a fuck at this point. As a consumer, I don't care about any of that. That's a problem of publishers. And if they can't deliver legal goods, then I'll use alternative. Just don't whine about it, because you didn't deliver it in the first place, so you don't deserve to be whining about it. Do you hear me publishers? Do you?

[VileTouch]

that's just ridiculous. they are counting the money they didn't make as somehow stolen from them and then blaming it on piracy. and that includes markets where they refuse to make products available!. As if they were entitled to have people buy their stuff every month.

 

news flash: if people are not interested in buying your products, then maybe, just maybe you are doing something wrong!. trying to blame it on file sharing (because IT IS NOT piracy!) only shows they're not willing to do anything to improve

[vibranium]

So, two studies contradict.

 

Why? The baseline figure to compare losses with. Are lower sales figures JUST LOW, or LOW BECAUSE of piracy?