SONGPEOPLE.CO.UK LISTEN. RATE. WIN

It’s impossible not to have noticed that the foundation of the music industry is currently undergoing an extreme makeover, and that this has been going on for some time now. 

Online piracy has become the norm for many would-be music and movie purchasers, and peer to peer services and their website assistants, such as the recently-found-guilty Pirate Bay, have often been accused of being the eventual doom of record labels.  However, there is a rich silver lining for the music industry, as a new study says that this assumption may be wrong.

The industry body PRS for Music executed a study that looked into trends between the artists at the top of both the legal and illegal charts; what they discovered was that new bands did not find much of an audience through P2P networks, but that downloaders are seeking to obtain the same popular music that they hear through less illegal sources.  That is, the most pirated tracks tend to also be those at the top of the sales charts.
Will Page and Eric Garland, who authored the study, wrote: “After taking into account some geographic differences, the top of the many music charts, from licensed and unlicensed venues, are markedly similar.”

There may be a way for labels to benefit from peer-to-peer file transfers, if they are willing to see these downloading actions in a new light.  If record companies could view piracy as a form of advertising rather than a threat, they may be able to work the situation to an advantage.  According to the study, a small percentage of those who download a file from a P2P site will also buy the same music.  The authors of the study spell it out for the labels like this: “If you offer people more choice, and help them make that choice, they will take that choice.”