i-downloader

If there's one thing that hasn't changed
about the Music Industry over the years,
it's a love of numbers...

From the first wax cylinders to the latest ring tone, it's always been about the numbers.

Recoupable expenses, outstanding royalties, payola, price fixing, pay to play? Numbers.

Charts, trophies, ticket counts? More numbers.

...and obviously, in any situation where
it's all about the numbers, B.Y.O. is the
way you want to go. Totally.

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The Industry has brought more than a century
of numerical creativity and a whole lotta cash
to its efforts to change federal laws, international agreements, the internet and the nature of music.

As mission statements go, it leans towards the ambitious but it doesn't stop there. The cherry on the top - the piece de resistance - is that those governments also stooge up as the designated enforcers, at no cost to the Industry.

Sound a little funny?

Guess what?

It's virtually a fait accompli...

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Ha-ha.

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Here are some fresh numbers,
courtesy of the BPI (British Recorded Music Industry)!

In September 2010 BPI commissioned Harris Interactive to conduct an in-depth online survey...here are a few highlights:

BEST POSITIVE VISUALIZATION AWARD
In total, Harris conservatively estimates that 1.2bn tracks will be illegally downloaded in 2010 – equivalent to a stack of CDs some 74 miles high stretching well into space.

Holy cow... that's a big stack. But 74 miles up
is too nebulous, know what i'm sayin'? Let's take those miles down to the street - check this out...

8 Mile - the off-ramp

- dude, if you were standing on 8 Mile Road in Detroit, that CD stack would run half-way out to Kalamazoo... or more conveniently, to Ann Arbor and back.

- yo, if you were standing at the bottom of the CN Tower in Toronto, bro, those CDs would go to Guelph and back.

- in Glasgow? to Edinburgh and back.

8 Mile - the high

PEOPLE DON'T SHARE OUR VALUATION? WTF?
More people are regularly using illegal sources to access music than some of the biggest legal music services on the internet – usage figures show Spotify (18%), Last.fm (15%) and we7 (8%) have many fewer regular users than P2P.

8 Mile - the book about the high

THE NEED IS STILL GREAT
~ 23% of all respondents are using P2P to acquire music illegally, the same percentage recorded as research carried out by Harris in February and November 2009.

8 Mile - the (other) movie

WE'RE HURT, OF COURSE, BUT WE'RE ALSO CONCERNED
Worryingly, a substantial proportion of illegal downloaders claim not to realise that their actions are unlawful.

8 Mile - the varietal

SEE WHAT WE'RE UP AGAINST? YOUNG PEOPLE ARE VILE!
Nearly half (44%) of all P2P users stated that they believed their actions to be lawful, rising to 69% for those using overseas pay sites and 56% using cyberlockers via board/forums.

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