Online Music and Video: Streaming Kills Piracy

Yesterday morning I was talking to my 13 year old son Josh. He's currently obsessed with the TV show Friday Night Lights. He's going back and watching all the old seasons. I asked him how he is doing that, expecting to hear "bit torrent". But instead he said "Netflix Watch Instantly". I was so happy to hear that and asked him why. He said, "bit torrent takes too long."

And then this morning, I came across this story in The Guardian which talks about a collapse in illegal sharing and a commensurate increase in legal streaming. The story says 26% of 14 to 18 year olds shared music illegally last month compared to 42% in December of 2007. The story also says 65% of teens stream music regularly.

I've been talking about this trend for a long time. In my post about The Free Music Business a couple summers ago, I said this about file-based music versus streamed music:

Streaming music is better because it's abundant. I don't own all the music in the world on my server. But almost every song ever recorded is on the Internet somewhere.

I am not a fan of file-based media business models. They lead to piracy and they put transactional friction into a system that doesn't require it. Streaming is much better. Unfortunately, we don't have a good mobile broadband system to make streaming possible everywhere. And until that happens, we will have files and we will have piracy.

But the good news is that as the media business wakes up and puts all the media we want out there in streams available on the Internet (paid or free - this is not about free), we see people streaming more and stealing less.

We used to wonder if we could "untrain" a generation to steal. The answer is yes. Just make it easier to get the content they want and they'll stop stealing. It makes my day to read that.

Comments

[User 446362:]

Why do you seem to care so much, whether people
do it legally or otherwise. Do you have a vested interest
in the entertainment industry. And if you do,
dont you think you should declare it. If you have a look
at walt mossbergs allthings d site, both walt and kara
swisher have a page where they declare their
interests, presumably so readers can decide,
whether they are reading objective reporting or
marketing propaganda.

Jul 13 09:12 AM

[Paul Zimbardo:]

It will be interesting to see how the entrance of Microsoft into the music streaming business will impact the established players. As these types of services become more legitimate, they will likely further reduce the amount of piracy.

The real question that has yet to be answered is whether these businesses will be commercially viable over the long-term.

Jul 13 10:48 AM

[Paul Zimbardo:]

The related news article can be found here:

www.telegraph.co.uk/sc...


On Jul 13 10:48 AM Paul Zimbardo wrote:

> It will be interesting to see how the entrance of Microsoft into
> the music streaming business will impact the established players.
> As these types of services become more legitimate, they will likely
> further reduce the amount of piracy.
>
> The real question that has yet to be answered is whether these businesses
> will be commercially viable over the long-term.

Jul 13 10:48 AM

[mineralt:]

Does anyone understand how Rhapsody makes money? The service is $10/month, but I think the artist or their record company make 9 cents a song. That's only 111 streams a month and i assume they are losing money. Anyone know?

Jul 13 11:09 AM

[brewer:]

Paul:
Why would anyone care what Microsoft's music scheme du jour is this time around? None of the others made sense, or worked long term. Did you miss them, or what?

Jul 14 10:59 AM

[Paul Zimbardo:]

@brewer

My point was that given how tenuous the viability of the established players, what will be the impact when Microsoft enters and pressures their margins even further?


On Jul 14 10:59 AM brewer wrote:

> Paul:
> Why would anyone care what Microsoft's music scheme du jour is this
> time around? None of the others made sense, or worked long term.
> Did you miss them, or what?

Jul 14 03:11 PM