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'Casual' Pirates Courted by Legal Music Streaming Sites

by Kaiser Hwang on July 20, 2009 at 08:15 AM

The Internet made pirating music as simple as clicking a few buttons in a program, much to the dismay of record companies around the world. Those same companies tried to control the music through the use of Digital Rights Management (DRM), but failed miserably. Only now are the record companies realizing that a large majority of people only pirate music because it's simply the easiest and most accessible way to find and listen to music. These "dinner party pirates" are not out to prove themselves to anyone, or stick it to the man -- they just want to listen to music. Give them a good solution, and, in theory, piracy will drop while revenue increases.

According to the New York Times, that's exactly what's happening in Britain with young music-streaming start-ups like Spotify and We7, which stream music for free and make revenue through site advertising. These sites have found immense growth in a fairly short amount of time (Spotify's revenues have doubled every month since launching this past February), while studies conducted by research firms Music Ally and Leading Question show that piracy among British teens has dropped almost in half since December 2007. While in no way a full solution to music piracy, the results so far are promising.

The story makes no mention of how similar U.S.-based companies like MySpace Music, imeem, and Last.FM are doing financially, but does note that unlike their European counterparts, U.S. sites tend to build around social networks as opposed to simple, no-frills access to the music. [From: The New York Times]

Tags: drm, mp3, music, piracy, spotify, top

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