The on-demand generation wants to eat it all

UK Music, the pan music industry collective headed up by ex-Undertone Feargal Sharkey has published a new survey of 1,800 14-24 year olds conducted by the University of Hertfordshire which shows that whilst music remains of fundamental importance to young people’s lives, according to Sharkey “what they are clearly trying to explain to us at the minute is that we can get it for free and we’re not going to get caught”. The survey shows that 90% of youngsters would miss music more than anything else (yes, including their mobile phones) but points out that the vast majority of the respondents know what copyrights is, understood what copyright is but “just don’t care”. 61% admitted to illegal downloading and peer-to-peer file swapping and a whopping 86% to copying CDs for friends, with a growing trend sending music by email, Skype, MSN and Bluetooth or copying hard drives.

Whilst the number illegally downloading was marginally down on UK Music’s 2008 survey (then 63%) most illegal downloaders engage in illegal activity regularly (83% at least weekly) and the survey found that the computer is the top entertainment hub for playing music, followed closely by iPods and other portable music players. The average young person has 8,159 music tracks on their hard drive – the equivalent of 17 days of non-stop listening to unrepeated tracks and perhaps unsurprisingly 57% admitted to hard drive copying – in effect copying someone else’s entire music collection. More interestingly for the music industry, the survey points to some positive messages from the on demand generation - the downloaders who amass their music collections illegally are willing to pay, as long as it's from an "all-you-can-eat" download service and 85% of them said they would pay for such a service if it was available. Whilst the survey shows a huge enthusiasm for streaming services like Spotify and YouTube, 78% of respondents would not be prepared to pay for streaming - and the trick seems to be to make downloading affordable and to allow the consumer to have complete control - almost all the participants want the ability to copy music from one device to another although of the participants who said they wanted the ability to move music between various devices, and 56% of respondents believed that manufacturers of MP3 players, mobile phones and other recordable devices should pay a fee to artists whose music they have copied – quite how though doesn’t seem to cross many of the respondent’s minds if they don't pay up somewhere along the chain!

In his introduction to the report Sharkey writes that the “ultimate challenge for music and other IP-based industries is to reconcile what the customer wants with what is economically and humanly possible” adding "we will achieve nothing if we do not work with music fans and young music fans in particular. We ignore engagement at our peril. That message is loud and clear." As a representative of the record industry, music publishers, musicians, writers and composers Sharkey goes on to say "The music industry continues to change at breakneck speed, and having been the first to wrestle with the impact and disruption of digital we have had to learn very quickly," adding "While young people continue to display such a passion for music and the industry continues to forge ahead I remain positive that we can successfully rise to these challenges. There are no silver bullet solutions, but I am convinced this research points us towards at least some of the answers". With 85% of respondents who use illegal P2P networks saying they would swap to a legal ‘fixed fee’ unlimited download service and 77% saying the would still buy CDs it is not all doom and gloom – is it?

A link to the report (and a summary) can be found here
http://www.ukmusic.org/component/content/article/25-research/153-uk-music-research-highlights-the-complexity-of-consuming-copying-and-sharing-of-music-between-14-24-year-olds

Fishing for digital undercurrents

The Saturday Times (13 June) is home to an interview with UK Music boss Fergal Sharkey and whilst the piece does contain a LOT of detail about Feargal's hobby of fly fishing, which had little interest for me (although I did once try to obtain some feathers from one of my particularly obnoxious cockerels, Bane, for some lures), it does contains some clues about how the UK music industry is hoping it can co-operate with the Government and Internet Service Providers in the future.

Feargal says that over the next weeks there will be some “incredibly exciting announcements” coming from individual ISPs and record labels - and also alludes to some new developments for the music industry from the Government's Digital Britain report, due out next Tuesday. The details are unclear about the new deal with ISPs, but it seems they will involve bundling music subscriptions into the cost of broadband - potentially customers could get unlimited music by paying slightly more to their ISP than for a normal internet connection. Once that happens, Feargal says he hopes that the need for illegal downloading will disappear. “Research shows that 80 per cent of 14 to 24-year-old UK filesharers would pay for a legal service,” he says. “Quite clearly, this is the direction we need to be heading.” With the IFPI saying that just one in twenty downloads is legal, Feargal says that music piracy represents a “mortal threat” to the industry, he says. It is estimated that the UK sector lost £180 million to online piracy in 2008 alone. “The next 12 months is going to be a crucial time in determining whether we have much of a music industry left in five years' time,” Feargal says. “That's where we are. Quite clearly we need something to be done very quickly otherwise we might not have much of an industry left.”

Alexi Mostrous's article reports that Feargal favours a three-pronged attack on piracy. Firstly, a new range of music services offered by ISPs and others. Secondly an educational campaign, like Respect the Value of Music, which aims to teach young people about copyright and, finally, an arrangement with the ISPs to write warning letters to those suspected of piracy. Interestingly Feargal says in the article that whilst he doesn't want to pre-empt Digital Britain, he disagrees with the recommendation made in the initial report that the industry should be able totake legal action persistent offenders saying “We have made it clear that we have no ambition to relive the past,” he says, referring to the period from 2000 to 2003 where international music companies launched lawsuits against thousands of teenagers. “It's frustrating that people think all the music industry wants to do is disconnect people”. With a new Pirate Party MEP in the European Parliament, the rather messy hiatus in the passing of Frabce's 'three strikes' law and the Joel Tenenbaum and Jamie Thomas cases continuing to attact negative publicity for the Recording Industry Association of America, I would have thought this is a wise comment indeed!

Feargal is no doubt that the next six months will be crucial. “If we don't have help from the Government and the ISPs the next few years could be desperately bleak,” he says. “We're playing with a very considerable number of British jobs. There are people at a very senior level who are deeply, deeply concerned.

You can read the interview in full, and catch up on the exciting world of fly fishing at

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article6488845.ece