Are Canadians downloading less?
p2pnet.net News Opinion:- The incidence of digital music downloads by Canadian adults is at its lowest since March of 2000, says a new study.
Currently, 32% of Canadian adults who are online have downloaded at least one music file, down from a high of 47% in June 2002, says Ipsos-Reid.
But Canadian adults are still more likely to have downloaded a digital music file than their opposite numbers in the US (32% – 24%1 ), says its study.
“With high-speed Internet access being more widespread here than in the US, it is logical that downloading music files is more popular in Canada,” says Chris Ferneyhough, the company’s Calgary vp.
“However, with Americans having access to a number of different fee-based and legal music download services, and with Americans finally hopping on the bandwidth bandwagon, it will be interesting to see if it continues to be more popular in Canada than the US.”
The research firm says the “hard-line” approach being taken by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) in the US is impacting Canadian downloaders.
“Among those who have indicated that they have stopped downloading music files, 21% say on an unaided basis that they stopped because of legal ramifications,” it says.
“This is almost twice the percentage that site moral concerns (12%), no longer interested in downloading (11%), too busy (11%), too much hassle (10%), prefer a physical compact disc (10%), or frustrated with downloading files of poor quality (10%).”
Some 41% of Canadian downloaders agree that the recent lawsuits in the United States targeting those who share music files online has caused them to download less often than they used to, and 43% agree that warnings by the Canadian Recording Industry Association earlier this year that they were going to launch lawsuits against individual music uploaders has caused them to download less often than they used to,” says Ipsos-Reid.
“The report was not commissioned by anyone,” Ferneyhough told p2pnet, adding that it’s part of a quarterly analysis of what Canadian adults are doing online.
“While clients purchase the report, we choose the topics covered.”
The CRIA, Canada’s RIAA, recently failed to convince a Canadian federal court that online file sharing is illegal and is “devastating” the multi-billion dollar music industry.
May 13th, 2004 at 6:40 am
In my case I am downloading less now, but mostly because I’ve caught up. I’ve got all I want of the oldies, that is from last month back to vinyl days.
I’m still downloading, but only as I discover new and interesting artists (late night CBC radio 2 usually). When I find someone or a band I like, I simply get as much of them as I can and sift through the tunes for keepers.
Interesting that this particular reason wasn’t listed as one possible explanation for the decline in downloads.
The world has been a brighter place since napster was first launched.
May 13th, 2004 at 2:13 pm
Ditto for me (wow, sounds exactly like my situation!). So if downloading is declining so rapidly, are the music companies seeing a comensurate increase in sales? And if the situation is better now, what’s the point of further legal suits and govenment interference?
May 14th, 2004 at 5:54 am
Ya it’s funny that on both sides of the border downloading is down, Yet the RIAA and their Canadian counterpart still claim that record sales are in the toilet. If downloading is down 50% then shouldn’t record sales be up at least 25% or 30%. Those kind of numbers would make big news and the big 5’s stock would be sky rocketing. The fact is record sales are hurting because the record companies are churning out the same garbage they have been for years. The kind of trash no one wants to spend their hard earned cash on, so they download it for free. Don’t get me wrong I think if someone earns a dollar they should be paid a dollar, however the recording industry hasn’t convinced me that the bands and music that are being manufactured these days is worth me spending my dollar. One more point, all of us canadians that buy blank cd’s and dvd’s are already compensating the recording industry and movie industry for our downloads through the levey imposed on blank media, so there is no possible argument to call it theft when we are paying the companies already. Now someone out there is going to say that the levey they collect is a drop in the bucket compared to the money that they are losing. All I can say is too bad. If you willingly collect that money than the transaction is complete. If I sell you a car for $2000 that is worth $20000 can I send the cops after you and have you arrested for theft?
Anyway that got alot more longwinded than I anticipated.
Sorry
LOL