Special issues of major Journals dedicated to research on music piracy

And returning to a focus on why we are all here, research on music piracy, there is a Special Issue on Consuming the ‘Illegal’: Situating Online Piracy in Everyday Experience scheduled to appear in the February 2013 edition of the Journal 'Convergence'. See http://convergence.beds.ac.uk/ and http://con.sagepub.com/.

Looking forward to seeing what comes out of that. Keep your eyes peeled.

In the meantime, why not check out the Special edition of the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services on 'The Future of Music Retailing' from March last year? See http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09696989/18/2.

There are some particularly excellent qualitative studies in there.

The fact that entire editions of major peer-reviewed Academic Journals such as those listed above are being committed to this issue is a testament to its popularity and prevalence in research circles.

Given that much research is directly and/or indirectly funded by the public, it seems only fair for the public to be informed of the findings of such research. In other words, click the links above! You will be able to read the abstract summaries of the studies at the very least.

Such an argument brings us neatly back to where we started and why this blog was created where discussion must still centre on how content is paid for - not whether or not it should have to be paid for. Knowledge isn't free and all that..

Twitter feed now live @musicpiracyblog with daily tweets.

Open-access article on Nine Inch Nails and how to make the most of the Internet to serve your fans

Turns out the Internet isn't necessary the enemy after all.

If you hop on over to the open-access Journal 'Empirical Musicology Review' you will be able to read an article titled 'Artist autonomy in a digital era: The case of Nine Inch Nails'. It goes into some depth on the recent marketing and distribution methods employed, critiquing Mike Masnick's (2009) business model of 'reason to buy' plus 'connect with fans' as accounting for the success enjoyed by Nine Inch Nails. Oh, and it was written by me.

An accessible read, it also has some take-home messages for new bands and how they can best achieve success in an increasingly segmented marketplace, with content on how different strategies work better for bands depending on their 'stage in the game'.

A PDF version of the article can be downloaded here.

If you haven't already seen it, watch Masnick's (2009) inspirational presentation linked above. The article won't make much sense if you haven't seen it.

Twitter feed online @musicpiracyblog with occasional Tweetage on all things music piracy

References

Brown, S.C. (2011). Artist autonomy in a digital era: The case of Nine Inch Nails. Empirical Musicology Review, 6(4), 198-213.

Masnick, M. (2009). How Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails Represent the Future of the Music Business.

Presentation given at 2009 Midem and Midemnet, Cannes, France.

Who is the most pirated artist in your area?

In case you missed it..

BBC Technology reporter Dave Lee's recent article discusses data collected from monitoring service Musicmetric as part of the inaugural digital music index. By monitoring the locations of BitTorrent users, the results shed light on downloading trends across the UK.

Ultimately, the data documents the overwhelming desire to illegally source recent music releases, where Lee speculates on the likely impact of broadband speeds and towns with large student populations as contributing towards the various downloading trends across UK cities.

If you click this link you will also be able to search for the most pirated artist in your area. Go on, have a look. SPOILER ALERT: In all likelihood, it will be Ed Sheeran.

The data collected is also available for use under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license and can be accessed here.

Occasional Tweets @musicpiracyblog between meals, naps and major life events

Spotlight on predictive factors: Age

We've looked at gender.. now it's time to consider age.

And yup, you guessed it. It's those pesky youngsters who are more likely to engage in music piracy.

Honing in on just one key study, demographic factors were explored by Mishra, Akman and Yacizki (2006) where age and experience were defined as predictive factors of digital piracy.

Why might this be? Are older people merely less likely to engage in piracy as they lack computer experience? Or is there something more complicated going on?

Age as a predictor is far from a consistent finding, where the majority of studies have focussed on student populations. As such, the trend may be slightly skewed. Furthermore, not every study exploring age has come to the same conclusion. 

It does sound intuitive, where anecdotally, there are a few obvious reasons why music pirates may well be predominantly younger. You may be able to think of some new ones. 

The UK government certainly seems to be hung up on 'young people', with Lord Peter Mandelson (the then Business Secretary) stating: “The fact that young people now expect to download content for free is morally as well as economically unstable” (BBC, 2009).

What do you think?

Ask around. Do you notice any consistent age differences?

References

BBC (2009). Net pirates to be 'disconnected'. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8328820.stm 

Mishra, A., Akman, I. and Yazici, A. (2006). Software piracy amongst IT professionals in organizations. International Journal of Information Management, 26(5), 402-413.

Twitter feed online @musicpiracyblog with daily updates.

Recommended books #1

For those of you interested in reading some books on music piracy, please see the reference list below to inform Google searches.

Craig, Honick and Burnett's (2005) book can be found on Google Books here and contains a good history of software piracy section, with a focus on the technical side of things.

Wikstrom's (2009) book contains an illuminating section on 'the social and creative music fan' along with informed speculation on the future of the music industry.

David's (2010) book provides a comprehensive timeline on Napster, and the subsequent fallout. The author also presents six case studies, citing different optimal strategies to promote and distribute music depending an artists 'stage in the game'.

Oh, and a novel about music piracy and aliens.. by Reid (2010) which has received positive reviews as a humorous social commentary on piracy and novel in its own right.

Recommended articles infrequently on the official Twitter feed @musicpiracyblog.

Twitter feed now live @musicpiracyblog with daily updates.

References

Craig, P., Honick, R. and Burnett, M. (2005). Software Piracy Exposed. Rockland, MA: Syngress Publishing.

David, M. (2010). Peer to Peer and the Music Industry. London: Sage.

Reid, R. (2012). Year Zero: A novel. New York: Ballantine Books.

Wikstrom, P. (2009). The Music Industry: Music in the Cloud. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Spotlight on deterrents: Good cop VS. Bad cop

A recent news article highlighted 'the Streisand effect', which explains how censorship can backfire.

Coined in 2005 by Michael Masnick (President and CEO of Floor64 and CEO and founder of Techdirt), Masnick coined the phrase in a blog entry as a response to the singer's attempts to censor images of her house appearing on the Internet. This inadvertently attracted infinitely more attention to the images than if she took no legal action.

The article linked above (and referenced below), explains how The Pirate Bay received a record amount of traffic after 5 UK ISP's were ordered to block access to the copyright-infringing website.

Think: 'DON'T LOOK DOWN'.

Traditional anti-piracy campaigns focus on the punitive measures which will be set in motion, if caught illegally downloading. d'Astous, Colbert and Montpetit (2005) observed that anti-piracy arguments had no significant impact on the behavioural dynamics underlying on-line music piracy, where a recent addition to the literature is Nandedkar and Midha's (2012) paper, suggesting that individuals holding an optimism bias engage in piracy as they believe to be of lower risk than other populations.

Elsewhere, Djekic and Loebbecke (2007) observed that technical protections fail in protecting application software from being illegally copied with none of the measures studied significantly reducing piracy. Indeed, Marshall (2004) remarks that technical solutions are 'not the answer' (p.8).

The focal point of this blog entry however, is the paper 'Preventing Digital Music Piracy: The Carrot or the Stick?' by Sinha and Mandel (2008). Their findings from three studies demonstrated that negative incentives are only a strong deterrent for certain consumers but can actually increase the propensity to pirate for others. Conversely, positive incentives, such as improved functionality, were observed to significantly reduce the tendency to pirate among all the consumer segments studied; with 56% of Swedish file-sharers citing Spotify as the reason they had curbed their habit (Jones, 2011).

Bad Cop 0.. Good Cop 1?

What do you think?

Twitter feed now live @musicpiracyblog with daily updates.

References

Cacciottolo, M. (2012). The Streisand Effect: When censorship backfires [online]. Available from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18458567 [Accessed June 16, 2012].

d’Astous, A., Colbert, F. and Montpetit, D. (2005). Music Piracy on the Web - How Effective Are Anti-Piracy Arguments? Evidence From the Theory of Planned Behaviour. Journal of Consumer Policy, 28, 289-310.

Jones, S. (2011, January). The Swede taste of success. Music Week. Retrieved from http://www.musicweek.com/

Masnick, M. (2005). Re: Since When is Is It Illegal To Just Mention A Trademark Online? [Web log message]. Retrieved from: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20050105/0132239.shtml.

Marshall, L. (2004). Metallica and Morality: The Rhetorical Battleground of the Napster Wars. Entertainment and Sports Law Journal, 1, 1-3.

Nandedkar, A. and Midha, V. (2012). It won't happen to me: An assessment of optimism bias in music piracy. Computers in Human Behavior, 28(1),41-48.

Sinha, R.K. and Mandel, N. (2008). Preventing Digital Music Piracy: The Carrot or the Stick? Journal of Marketing, 72(1), 1-15.

Guest blog post on Live Music Exchange: Anatomy of a gig

Hop on over to the excellent Live Music Exchange website to read my recent article as part of their 'Anatomy of a gig' series.

Going beyond the conventions of a normal concert review, the entry discusses a performance of The Wall, as performed by Roger Waters last summer (with David Gilmour appearing for Comfortably Numb).

Nostalgia, issues of value, the business of live music, motivations on live music attendance, the role technology plays in live music.. it's all there. In detail.

A recommended website, Live Music Exchange is a great resource which is worthy of your attention in general.

Enjoy.

Twitter feed now live @musicpiracyblog