It’s no secret that the music industry hates piracy with a fiery passion. Yet the lawsuits that have occurred over the past few years seem a bit gratuitous every time another study comes to light saying that those who use P2P to acquire music illegally are bigger music consumers. This time around, the pirates are the de-facto “biggest consumers of legal music options,” buying ten times as much music as the non-pirates. The reason for this behavior makes far more sense than the record industry would like you to think.
The more music people listen to, the more they become part of the music culture. So given the plethora of listening options available on P2P networks, pirates are rather quickly turned from apathetics into music lovers. Music lovers are people who are quite likely to buy music when they think it’s worth the money, especially as buying music is a way to help ensure that artists you enjoy will continue to make music. With the vast quantities of music they listen to, pirates-turned-music-lovers end up supporting far more artists than do non-pirates, thus they buy more music. Does this seem alarmingly simple? If so, welcome to the club.
As is frequently cited by the music industry, the money pipe that drenched the music industry in capital in the mid to late 90s has become a trickle of its former self, so the industry blames piracy. But the real culprit is the rise of options. Back in 1998, if you liked that song you heard on the radio, you went out and bought the album – you didn’t have much of a choice. But now you can simply buy the individual song via the Amazon MP3 store. The record companies were perfectly aware this was happening, which is why aside from one or two singles, all the Backstreet Boys albums were comprised of filler material. That didn’t matter as the majority of listeners – the iPod crowd, if you will – did not then and certainly do not now listen to albums in their entirety. So if they can save $9 by not buying songs they would never listen to anyway, this consumer group is going to choose that option. $9 less here and $9 less there, and an ocean of cash quickly becomes a puddle.
