Filed under: iTS, Internet Tools
iTunes more popular than <s>God</s> P2P
News.com reports that a new study finds that iTMS is as popular or more popular than various P2P music file-sharing The best sound byte in the article is from Russ Crupnick, president of the NPD Group's music and movies division, who says: "These (paid) digital download stores appear to have created a compelling and economically viable alternative to illegal file sharing."
Imagine that. Customers actually prefer to use technology to legally buy music over illegally pirating it. I seem to remember every study that wasn't falsified by the RIAA about music sharing online previous to this one stating the same exact thing. Now, if the RIAA, and Apple's switch to Intel DRM chips means that even more of consumer's fair use rights are infringed upon, this will probably change.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Craig P Jolicoeur said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
Its good to see some stats like this coming out. With all the junk downloads and virus you pick up floating around on P2P services, obviously people with want to get files they know are "clean" and "high-quality"
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Henry said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
I agree with you that DRM isn't good. Regardless of whether its right or wrong to infringe upon fair use, what good does it do? Media is always going to be pirated and DRM is doing nothing to stop that. If you're willing to pay to get legal media you're probably not going to pirate it (Its already being pirated usually). Doesn't DRM increase illegal file sharing because people don't want to deal with DRM?
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Michael G said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
The day my Dad called me up and said he just bought $50 worth of songs on iTunes was the day I bought Apple stock. Luckly this was when it was at $22....If he could figure this out, and use it and like it, anyone could!
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iFelix said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
The more DRM makes it difficult to do simple things the more people will use other *sources*. iTunes DRM does not impact on me, I can copy the music to other computers, I can burn it to CD for the car, I can use it in my iMovie projects.
However I can't use it as a ringtone on my SE S700i phone. I need to burn it to CD (to get rid of the DRM), rip it to mp3 and then on a Windows PC use Sony Ericsson's software to *add* DRM so that it can be used as a ringtone - now that's annoying DRM.
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Chris McDowell said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
DRM is bad. It will always be cracked though because there is always someone out there who does not want DRM. If you can play the file then you can crack it somehow. Hardware with DRM wont stop it the DRM just raises the price that it takes to make the hardware or software. I think the majority of people will pay for something if it sold at a reasonable price and it has the same features as the pirated stuff. P2P was big cause people could easily get music from home. Now people can easily get music from home with music services and according to the study above they have started paying for the music.
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Tan Hoang said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
WinMX? Really? Everyone I knew who used it stopped using it, or did they?
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teksno said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
well i think ill use the russian stores as long as i can cause $.99 is just too much money for "A" song...
when i can but entire DRM FREE albums and doo with them as i please...well its not much of a chice if you've ever taken an econiomics class in your life.
if you havent, heres a small diagram:
DRM (aka crippled)= bad
no DRM (aka do with it as you please for ever)= good
now if teh "bad" music is more expensive then the good music...well
heres a website or 2 for you to do some research if you feel you want to be informed...
www.allofmp3.com
and
www.mp3search.ru
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gm said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
maybe you should have taken a spelling class instead of an "econiomics" class there sport...
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Ben said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
"P2P music file-sharing sites"
Argh, don't say this! The whole point of PEER-to-PEER is that there's no central "site" required. At first this bit of sloppy language made me doubt the credibility of the study (could they be dumb enough to be looking at visits to the download website for each P2P client rather than songs traded?). But since it doesn't appear in the News.com.com article, I'm forced to conclude that you, the TUAW writers, suck.
Well, no you don't, but please don't use this annoying phrase.
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Ben said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
"P2P music file-sharing sites"
Argh, don't say this! The whole point of PEER-to-PEER is that there's no central "site" required. At first this bit of sloppy language made me doubt the credibility of the study (could they be dumb enough to be looking at visits to the download website for each P2P client rather than songs traded?). But since it doesn't appear in the News.com.com article, I'm forced to conclude that you, the TUAW writers, suck.
Well, no you don't, but please don't use this annoying phrase.
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Ben said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
Except the report does say "P2P site WinMX". Sorry, but at least now you have the moral high
ground.
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Brian said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
LimeWire sucks and I've never even heard of WinMX. This is a completely useless survey. Let's say a person downloaded two songs off of iTunes and 200 off of BitTorrent, well according to NPD Group that makes them equally popular.
Plus, how often are they going to get an honest answer to the question, "How much illegal music did you download illegally this month illegal?" That's like calling up households and asking people if they smoke weed, think you're going to get accurate results from that?
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