Where are the Downloading Thiefs?

Illegal downloads of music are down. 42% of 14-18 year olds downloaded music illegally in 2007. By January of this year, that number was down to 26%.

Now the RIAA & the record labels would like to think they scared people into not downloading by suing their pants off. Problem is, that didn’t really have the desired outcome. People are now finding plenty of websites where they can stream music on demand. These sites include MySpace, YouTube, and Pandora.

So, if a music fan wants to hear a new song from their favorite band, they will find better quality, a cleaner interface, and a safe environment at one of these ad-supported websites.

There is a great article from this week’s NY Times that discusses this issue in depth. Here are some of the highlights:

Music fans who in the past used bit torrent sites to download music are now finding it easier and more user-friendly to use some of the advertisement-funded sites like Pandora. Also, since MySpace introduced their upgraded MySpace Music late last year, traffic has risen 3-fold. Last September, MySpace had 4.2 million visitors. In June of this year, they had 12.1 million.

This may be a little bit of light for record labels that have been hit hard from the decline of album sales. If more people use their home computers and mobile devices to stream music instead of steal music, the labels may make further gains in sales.

Stay tuned,
Erik
erikrostad.com
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