According to a warning from a newly published report, the global music industry may face a crisis as today’s youth prefer to illegally download music from the Internet rather than use legally licensed music.
This report, conducted by Jupiter Research, indicates that the number of European consumers illegally downloading music through information-sharing websites—most notably Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks—has surpassed those using legally licensed music.
The number of illegal sharing networks is three times greater than that of legal networks. Meanwhile, those who share information or music over these networks—mostly young people—often have no concept that music is a product that requires payment for use.
Freedom of Consumption
| “As many as 34% of customers aged 15 to 24 share music illegally on the Internet.” |
Mark Mulligan, an analyst at Jupiter Research, stated: “The digital youth—as this expert terms it—is being raised on an unrestricted diet of free and accessible music from peer-to-peer sharing systems. However, as these consumers age and gain more spending power, they will become one of the key customer groups for the music industry.
“If the music industry can shift these young consumers from freely using illegal music sources to utilizing legally paid music while they are still young, it may be difficult for these potential customers to develop a paid music consumption behavior in the future, and the recording industry may suffer long-term losses.”
According to the statistics from this report, only 5% of Internet customers are willing to pay for legal music downloads, while up to 15% of customers share music without compensating the authors.
However, this report identifies a definite demand for legal music in certain popular sites like iTunes, where 10% of European customers are paying to download legal tracks. This percentage is highest in Sweden, with 31% of customers participating.
