This just in: Piracy keeps music popular. Also, sky determined to have bluish hue.

[Ⓐaron]

File-sharing sites help make popular acts more popular, finds a study.

The research, by industry body PRS for Music, showed the most pirated pop songs tend to be those at the top of the music charts.

There was little evidence that file-sharing sites helped unsigned and new bands find an audience, it found.

It suggests file-sharing sites are becoming an alternative broadcast network comparable to radio stations as a way of hearing music.

...

Mr Page and Mr Garland suggest that file-sharing sites are reinforcing divisions in the music world and only making the popular more popular.

Despite this, the report said, the fact that music was free on file-sharing networks meant people did occasionally listen to bands they had never heard of before.

By contrast, on sites where people have to pay to listen they only download the tracks they know they want.

"If the sellers sell it, it might never be bought; but if the swappers offer it, at least one person will likely take it," said the study.

Given this, said the authors, it might be worth music companies regarding file-sharing sites as comparable to radio and TV as a broadcast network.

sauce

Of course, they'd sell even more records if they didn't piss people like me off by prosecuting six-year-old kids and eighty-year-old grandmothers for downloading music in the first place.

Discuss.

 

[Channy]

Are they still prosecuting people? I thought it would be too hard to track them all by now.

 

[Ⓐaron]

Hopefully not

 

[Cthulhu]

I haven't heard any news from new lawsuits in the US.

But I guess that's also because pretty much all of the major record companies have stopped or greatly reduced their financial contributions to the RIAA. The latest news I could find was that ISPs might be helping the RIAA out with their shit. The MPAA / Hollywood is also leaning to that direction.

In other news, the MPAA sued Real Networks over an app that can store a DVD onto your PC but which leaves the copy protection intact (see here, whilst at the same time advising teachers they should put a camcorder in front of their TV to record bits off of a DVD instead of using rip / copy software. Oh, the irony .