British teens warm up to streaming music

Roughly a month ago, an important policy document was published in the United Kingdom: Digital Britain. This report sets out the British Governments stance towards illicit file-sharing, proposing measures to thwart piracy. While these measures are not likely to take full effect before 2010, the tide already appears to be turning, says a recent survey.

The survey, in which more than 1000 British music fans between the ages of 14 and 64 participated, was conducted by The Leading Question, a research agency specialising in analysing consumer behaviour with regard to digital media. The survey showed that people are less prone to file-sharing. The overall figure of people regularly (meaning more than once a month) downloading illegally declined from 22% in December 2007 to 17% in January 2009. Comparatively, this is a drop of nearly a quarter.

The biggest drop occured in the age group of 14-18 year olds. In December 2007, 42% said to be downloading regularly. In January 2009, only 26% did so.

Streaming is the most popular alternative, with more than 65% of teens reporting to stream music at least once a month. The research also shows the comparative volume of pirated tracks to legally purchased tracks has halved since the last survey. In December 2007 the ratio of tracks obtained from file-sharing compared to tracks obtained as legal purchases was 4:1. In January 2009 the ratio had narrowed to just

2:1.

This does not mean the end of piracy, warns Paul Brindley, CEO of Music Ally, who contributed to the survey. “File sharing is a moving target, so industry and Government policies need to recognise this. It’s already being somewhat displaced by other means of accessing music for free. Some are licensed, many are not licensed and some involve a bit of both. Kids find services like YouTube much more convenient for checking out new music than file-sharing. But even YouTube can become a source of piracy with some kids ripping YouTube videos and turning them into free MP3 downloads.”

The goals set in Digital Britain, to curb piracy by 70%, may be difficult to achieve by the measures proposed. Rather, says The Leading Question CEO Tim Walker, the best way to blow pirates out of the water is by developing new business models to distributing music “that are easier and more fun to use, whether that’s an unlimited streaming service like Spotify or a service like the one recently announced by Virgin which aims to offer unlimited MP3 downloads as well as unlimited streams.”