Canada’s recording industry hopes a new study will dispel the perception that music downloaders will eventually buy copyrighted music.
The survey, commissioned by the Canadian Recording Industry Association and released by research firm Pollara Inc., indicates that 28 per cent of respondents who reported buying less music over the last 12 months cited the decline was mainly due to “downloading, file-sharing and CD-burning.”
While 52 per cent of non-downloading music consumers said they bought music in the past month, the survey reported, only 35 per cent of downloaders said they had purchased music in the same period.
“This research clearly indicates that music consumers who download are less likely to purchase music than those who don’t download,” comments Brian Robertson, President, Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA). “This negates arguments to the contrary that peer-to-peer activity is just sampling and those people go out and buy the music later from a legitimate source.”
The twin villains in the research were CD burners and illegal file-sharing sites like Kazaa. Recent use of CD burners to copy music has grown from 18 per cent in late 2001 to 35 per cent today (measured over the prior 6 months).
Almost half of music consumers who download said that all of the music they burned to CD came from file sharing sites like Kazaa.
Between Fall 2001 and Spring 2004, the number of music consumers admitting to using Kazaa in the past month had climbed from 8 per cent to 26 per cent. Almost half of those who regularly visit the file-sharing sites say they downloaded between 20 and 100 songs in the past month. Taken at face value, this amounts to an average of 180 million tracks per month, according to Pollara estimates.
CRIA reports that the Canadian music industry has experienced retail sales losses in excess of $465 million since 1999 as well as industry layoffs of over 25 per cent throughout the past year. More than 45,000 individuals are directly or indirectly dependent upon the health of the recording industry in Canada, including those in songwriting, recording studios, manufacturing, retailing, broadcasting, music publishing, concert promotion, management and many other primary and support services.
The CRIA’s attempts at mass RIAA style downloader suits and litigation have been blighted all the way in Canadian courts thus far. Canadian heritage minister Helene Chalifour Scherrer was ready to re-write Canada’s copyright laws to enable the Big Five record labels to open Canada and Canadians up to lawsuits.
In March Justice Konrad von Finckenstein ruled that putting music into a computer directory that may, or may, not be shared by someone else online doesn’t constitute copyright infringement under Canadian law. And last month’s Supreme Court online music tariff decision popularly known as the Tariff 22 case culminated nine years of legal wrangling as the Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers of Music in Canada (SOCAN), a leading Canadian music collective, failed in its attempt to pin a new royalty for downloaded music on Canada’s Internet service providers.
The Tariff 22 case dates back to 1995 when SOCAN first applied for a new tariff for downloading online music. After four years of hearings, the Copyright Board of Canada issued a decision in 1999 that largely absolved Internet Service providers from collecting such a tariff.
In a somewhat conflicting survey a Statistics Canada report released today reveals that slightly less than 38% of regular home Net users report downloading music in 2003, “down from a high of 48% in 2001.”
Related Reading
New Industry Study Shows Downloading and Burning Discourages Music Sales [CRIA News]
File Sharing No Threat to Music Sales [Washington Post]
Balancing Rights of Creators, Users [theStar.com]
Top Court Rules ISPs Not Liable for Royalties [CBC News]
Online File Swapping Legal:Court [CBC News]
The Recording Industry is Trying to Kill the Goose That Lays the Golden Egg [Bricklin.com]
RIAA Facts and Figures [RIAA]
Global Music Sales Fall by 7.6% in 2003 [IFPI]
Record Sales Up, Shows Soundscan, RIAA Playing With Stats? [Magnatune Blog]
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