Music Research: Legal Hits Just As Dominant On P2P
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Chris Anderson may think the internet unleashes a sales boom for obscure and old content but, in the P2P file-sharing world, music download patterns look uncannily like those back in the world of mainstream hits, according to new research. The Long Tail Of P2P paper, which observed illegal downloading habits over 12 months, says: “Consumers are still driven to seek the same music in legal and illegal markets. The most swapped files were also the most downloaded on legal music sites, indicating that what’s popular is popular.”
SEE ALSO: Long Tail Sells Little Music, Research Claims; Anderson Questions Methodology
Authored by P2P metrics monitor BigChampagne‘s CEO Eric Garland and UK royalty collector PRS For Music‘s chief economist Will Page, the paper claims to “refute” Anderson’s theory. Far from producing a new, small trickle of popularity for unlikely classics and indie gems, P2P actually exhibits “a very hit-heavy, skinny tail profile”, it says. Example - Lady GaGa’s album was downloaded 388,000 times in just one week of April alone. Garland: “We are yet to see a big hit or wildly popular release in the pirate market that was not also a top seller in the licensed market.”
—Chasing its tail?: We haven’t seen the full paper yet, but this actually sounds some way from disproving The Long Tail thesis. After all, Anderson was never talking about the illegal market in isolation, but about online in general. Whilst the most popular tracks in this study were downloaded over 14 million times in a year, more than 13 million individual tracks were also swapped at least once - that sure sounds like a long tail, albeit a virtually inconsequential one…
Popularity in P2P may mostly match that in legal downloads, the researchers say, but the likes of iTunes have deep archives, too - so who’s to say such legal services themselves don’t have a long tail that’s quite unlike the hit-centric market for CDs? Well, the researchers themselves, as it happens - according to Will Page’s previous research, only 173,000 individual albums were bought out of a total 1.23 million in 2007, and only three million singles out of 13 million.
—Legalise P2P?: The important subtext of the conclusion may suggest the record business would be better off monetising P2P, through licensing ISPs who track customers’ activities, than continuing to fight against downloaders. Page: “The study allows PRS for Music to understand an illegal digital market for music that’s been with us for longer and is far larger than the legal one. By doing so, it helps move the PRS for Music forward with the challenge of monetising it on behalf of our songwriters.”
The paper is being presented at The Great Escape festival in Brighton, which will also see YouTube and PRS share a panel stage to discuss licensing.
@robertandrews
May 13, 2009 6:00 PM ET
Posted In: Entertainment, Music, Legal, Research & Metrics, Research, Technologies / Formats, P2P
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