Fewer people are downloading music from the internet illegally than ever before, according to a report this week from Entertainment Media Research.
The study in part attributes this decrease to consumers' fears that internet service providers will cut off their web access if they are found to be illegally downloading or sharing songs. Another reason for the growing popularity of legal downloads must surely be the number of decent online services that are available. Until fairly recently, if you wanted to download music from the internet, the only option was Apple's iTunes Music Store.
That was great if you owned an iPod, but not much help if you used another music player – most songs sold through the iTunes Music Store are encrypted with digital rights-management software (DRM) that prevents piracy and illegal copying, but also restricts the sort of devices tracks can be stored and played on. Consumers were reluctant to pay for legal download services when the ways in which they could use the music were so heavily restricted, and varied so widely from service to service.
Added to this, music available on peer-to-peer filesharing sites was DRM-free, and playable on any MP3 player, so it's not hard to see why so many people turned to illegal downloading. Times are changing, however, as record labels acknowledge that providing consumers with the music they want, in the format they want it, is a much better way of encouraging people to pay for songs.
A number of online music stores have launched in recent months that offer legal downloads from all the "big four" record labels, as well as hundreds of independents, in a universal, DRM-free MP3 format that can be used on any device.
7 Digital, for instance, was the first site in Britain to offer this kind of legal music download service, while Amazon's similar digital download store has proven a big success in America. It is expected to launch in this country next year. One interesting fact the study uncovered is the difference in attitude to downloads between teenagers and adults. While 58 per cent of 13- to 17-year-olds surveyed said they had been downloading songs illegally, over-35s were more inclined to download at least one song per month from a legal source.
Perhaps the issue here is one of income as much as perception. Youngsters who have grown up with the internet, and for whom peer-to-peer filesharing websites are second nature, have been used to the "cult of free" that exists online – that everything from social networks to email to watching videos on YouTube is available at no charge – and apply a similar mantra to music.
Young people are also likely to dabble in a range of music genres, from hip hop to death metal, rather than perhaps building a dedicated music collection in the same way someone over 35 might choose to do.
That's why so many mobile phone companies, such as Nokia and Sony Ericsson, have started to offer customers the ability to download unlimited tracks to their phones for a flat monthly fee, and many online services also provide unlimited downloads.