How Music Streaming Is Stopping Piracy

How Music Streaming is Stopping Piracy

In the early 2000’s, music piracy was the biggest problem for the entertainment industry. The craze of downloading music straight to personal computers via P2P networks started in colleges, but quickly spread to homes all throughout the United States. Napster and LimeWire became household names. In fact, Napster founder Shawn Parker was even featured on the October 2nd, 2000 cover of Time magazine.

In 2008, 1.2 billion songs were downloaded illegally. By 2012, that number had dropped 80% to 210 million illegal music downloads for the year (Music Streaming). What has changed? Music streaming services have become a legal alternative to people who once were prone to downloading all their music. Streaming services such as Deezer, Spotify, Grooveshark, Rdio, and Pandora all took rise between 2005 and 2010, and today only two of them – Spotify and Pandora—remain dominant in their industry. Recently, even bigger competitors have come into the streaming industry, with Amazon, Google, and Apple all offering their own music streaming services.

Most of these services offer both free, ad-supported streaming, and ad-free premium streaming for paying customers. One study done in Norway had shown that 47% of internet users were currently using a music streaming service, and over half of them said that they pay for the premium option for the service (Piracy Collapses). It turns out people are willing to pay for music. They just don’t seem to think $1 per song is a good deal.

Olav Torvund, a former professor of law at University of Oslo has said about streaming services, “When you have a good legitimate offer, the people will use it. There is no excuse for illegal copying, but when you get an offer that does not cost too much and is easy to use, it is less interesting to download illegally” (Piracy Collapses). Similarly, actor Kevin Spacey gave a speech on Netflix’s business model at the 2013 Edinburgh International Television Festival where he similarly stated, “And through this new form of distribution, we have demonstrated that we have learned the lesson that the music industry didn’t learn: Give people what they want, when they want it, in the form they want it in, at a reasonable price, and they’ll more likely pay for it rather than steal it." He then humorously added, “Well, some will still steal it, but I think we can take a bite out of piracy. (Smith)" The idea is simple enough. Give people what they want, how they want it, and at a reasonable price. This obviously leaves the door open for complaints, especially from the industry side, asking why the customers should hold so much power in this negotiation. That’s a very reasonable question, but the fact is that if people feel the value is there, and there aren’t any major hoops to jump through to get the content, they will