Dara O Briain's Science Club

Off topic, but for those of you in the UK with access to BBC iPlayer, click here for a great episode of Dara O Briain's Science Club all about music.

There's some great Music Psychology content in there, with questions raised over the pros and cons of technology. 

Don't be shy. Dip in.

Tweets @musicpiracyblog

'Another one bites the dust': The decline of retail in the UK (HMV and Blockbuster)

Earlier in January 2013, both HMV and Blockbuster have went into liquidation.

Some news reports have posed questions like who will take their place on the high street, while others speculate that Amazon has been the root cause of their collapse.A good background piece on HMV can be found here.

I have seen very little attention paid to piracy.

Undoubtedly, recent shifts have offered excellent rivals to purchasing physical copies of CD's, DVD's/Blu-Ray and video games. Spotify, for example, continues to prosper. Equivalents in the realm of film such as LoveFilm and Netflix are also proving increasingly popular.

The reason is the emerging preference for all things digital, given the increased functionality and convenience of digital goods. This includes pirated media.

News reports covering the collapse of HMV and Blockbuster are perhaps the post possible modes of communicating the scale and impact of piracy to the wider public. As such, it's a shame that there has not been any real effort to do this.

Is it because piracy is not relevant? Perhaps. Exact figures, as with all crime, are elusive. The fact is that piracy is still a major threat to the creative industries where one need only search #torrent or #piratebay on Twitter to see that people are actively watching screeners of major Hollywood, ahem, Blockbusters prior to theatrical release. All sorts of tips on how to avoid being caught are exchanged on Twitter and other forms of social media (not to mention all the password protected forums).

People are increasingly more reluctant to pay for music and movies. They don't have to. It's easy to access them without risk of being caught. This deserves to be communicated to the wider public.

If nothing else, this blog entry draws attention to video games, where the Call of Duty series continues to sell millions of units legally, raking in more money than any Hollywood Blockbuster has in the last 5 years. Why? It deserves to be explored in more depth and will feature in a forthcoming blog entry.

For now, current reports suggest both HMV and Blockbuster may survive, in one guise or another. Time will tell.

One thing is certain, 'the times they are a-changin'.

Occasional Tweetage @musicpiracyblog

US Congress employes are pirates too

Check this out.

Whilst it's good to know that they are watching some good movies like 'The Dark Knight Rises' and TV shows like 'The Walking Dead', the more sinister side to this story is the implication that not only do policymakers not know what they are talking about, but they don't care.

Exposing this hypocrisy is a positive thing, where as I have mentioned elsewhere, research findings from Academia are not always readily absorbed into the mainstream consciousness quickly enough to help inform genuine changes in the real world. A crude rule of thumb I have heard tossed around from a few seasoned researchers is that it takes approximately 10 years for knowledge in research to be dissolved into common knowledge.

Anyhow, this news item (and the countless others circulating online) are widely read by the general public and as such, good journalism from reputable sources such as The Guardian are an important contribution in disseminating information on piracy to the general public.

In practical terms, the hypocrisy undermines the confidence in policymakers.

Tweetage @musicpiracyblog

(More) Special issues of major Journals dedicated to research on music piracy

Happy new year, dear reader.

In keeping with looking forward, let us first of all look back.

Further to Octobers entry on Special Editions of major Journals being committed to piracy and the digital revolution, find below links to two other such instances in the Journal 'Information Economics and Policy'.

Special issue: Digital Piracy, from December 2010

and

The economics of Digital Media Markets, from March 2012

Between them, you have 20 articles on topics related to the content discussed on musicpiracyresearchblog, with an emphasis on looking ahead to future trends. DRM protections, sales displacement, demand for live music.. it's all in there.

Also keep your eyes peeled for a special edition of the Journal Convergence next month titled: "Consuming the ‘Illegal’: Situating Online Piracy in Everyday Experience".

As mentioned previously, the presence of such editions is a testament to the interest in the topic amongst active researchers in different disciplines.

Occasional Tweets between sneezing @musicpiracyblog

A door closes, a window opens.. Why blocking websites doesn't work

Click here for a good article titled 'Clickonomics: Determining the Effect of Anti-Piracy Measures for One-Click Hosting'.

It discusses One-Click Hosters such as Megaupload and Rapidshare and how present efforts to close them are failing. It's one of the few articles to specifically consider such services, rather than piracy more broadly.

The authors, Lauinger, Syzdlowski, Onarlioglu, Wondraeck, Kirda and Kruegel (2012) ultimately conclude that reducing the demand for pirated content by providing legitimate alternatives is the best move forward, a sentiment echoed by many.

Check it out.

Tweets @musicpiracyblog

Happy Holidays!

Enjoy the festivities folks, wherever you are.

If you can.

Long gone (via some blips) is the tradition of the Christmas number one.

2013 will see major posts on the blog switching from bi-weekly to monthly. Rest assured though, they will be meatier than a stuffed Christmas turkey. In between will be more informal posts with personal musings and links.

Below, find a rare performance of the Pearl Jam Holiday song 'Let me sleep'.

Happy Holidays!

Occasional Tweetage between chocolate scoffing @musicpiracyblog

Links between music piracy and live music

An under-researched phenomenon, how live music ties in with music piracy is the focus of this post.

Gayer and Shy (2006) argue that demand for live performances is reduced when piracy is prevented. Given the recent boom of interest in live music, and with the main source of income for artists generally being through live music (Connolly and Krueger, 2006), such an arguement would suggest that it is in the interests of musicians to give their music away for free.

However, not only do some genres not lend themselves particularly well to a live setting, but it isn't a viable alternative to profiting from recorded music. It is also environmentally unsustainable. Plus, recorded music sells live music. As an experience good, music must be heard and enjoyed before a fan will consider making a ticket purchase. Recorded music must first exist, and recording a good quality album is not free.

Mortimer, Nosko and Sorensen (2010) note the decline in album sales is greater for large artists than for small artists, where it is believed that part of the decline in profit from traditional sources may be counterbalanced by increased demand for complementary goods (consider Pearl Jams recent PJ20 series*). When you consider the concept of an artists stage in the game as also mediating how best to distribute music (as discussed in a previous blog post) and what you end up with is a complicated relationship between recorded and live music, but a relationship nonetheless.

And one which should be explored in more detail in future research.

Twitter feed now live @musicpiracyblog

References

 

Connolly, M. and Krueger, A.B. (2006). Chapter 20 Rockonomics: The Economics of Popular Music. Handbook on the Economics of Art and Culture, 1, 667‐719. 

Gayer, A. and Shy, O. (2006). Publishers, artists, and copyright enforcement. Information Economics and Policy, 18, 374-384.

Mortimer, J.H. Nosko, C. and Sorensen, A. (2010). Supply Responses to Digital Distribution: Recorded Music and Live Performances [working paper].#

Supplemental

* For lovingly in depth reviews of the PJ20 series, see the links below.

http://chaosintoorder.wordpress.com/2012/03/25/pj20-the-book/

http://chaosintoorder.wordpress.com/2012/04/01/pj20-the-movie-3/

http://chaosintoorder.wordpress.com/2012/04/09/pj20-the-soundtrack/

#Now published as a 2012 article.