Taste for illegal tunes strong for Europe's youth

Illegal downloads are still beating legal online music in Europe, analysts say.

According to a new report from analyst house JupiterResearch, consumers are three times more likely to get their digital music from illegal file-sharing networks than pay to download the tracks from online song shops such as iTunes and Napster, with 15 percent of consumers using P2P sites and 5 percent using the legitimate online shops.

The taste for illegal music is strongest among youths. Of those consumers between 15 and 24 years old, 34 percent are illegal file sharers and, according to the report, have little concept of music as a paid commodity.

Mark Mulligan, an analyst at JupiterResearch, said that despite the growth in legal sales from services like Apple Computer's iTunes, as well as legal actions against uploaders, illegal file-sharing is here to stay.

"It's a firmly entrenched behavior and the fact it's free makes it more difficult," he said.

However, the problem is not purely a digital one: Young people are happy to get their music illegally whatever format it's available on.

JupiterResearch found that 43 percent of younger consumers prefer copying CDs to buying them and 40 percent believe that CDs aren't worth what they cost.

The music industry needs to rethink how it deals with young file-sharers, Mulligan said.

"There needs to be a sea-change in approach," he said. "Instead of (the industry) paying lip service to legal services...there needs to be a whole new layer of free legal services," such as ad-supported downloads.

Jo Best of Silicon.com reported from London.

Seeing all the files on megaupload.com

Megaupload.com is a website that lets users host large files and send them directly to other users. People have now been using http://www.peer2link.com (powered by google) to find any file that is on megaupload.com or rapidshare.de and download it, even if they weren't the original recipient. Just another way of how free music is thriving

[joaopaulo.ferreira]

Legal music is way too expensive in developing countries

There's no way i'm going to spend 40 bucks on a CD just to have
15 songs and nothing else but an inexpressive jewel case and a
booklet.

As long as the industry keep over pricing their products making
virtually inavaiable for consumers to have it, people will find a
way to get those products.

Over pricing should be considered illegal and not only Kazza, e-
Mule and others...

[Roman12]

yep,

Yeah, I agree. One dollar for a song may not seem much for some people, but for others in other countries, it may be the be as much as a full meal.
__________________________________
R.K.
http://www.Remove-All-Spyware.com/

[bobby_brady]

This is good news

The RIAA must pay for past damages they've done to us consumers.

[Nneuromancer]

P2P has lot more to offer

Problem is that the legal sites thou large, just are not large enough, and are limed to the country that they are in, or are not set up for easy use to find foreign music. Try finding the group ?Tic Tac Toe? on Napster or iTunes. Every one likes something different.

[SqlserverCode]

Once you get stuff for free.......

Once you get stuff for free it is very difficult to convince someone to pay for it. You are ?hooked? for life. Kids need all their money to buy games, clothes etc etc. What kid has enough money to buy all the stuff they want? If there are things that they can get for free then they will do exactly that

http://work-out.blogspot.com/

Legal sites offer little....

the problem with all the legal sites is that it's soo seperated. I cannot buy songs from an online legal store in say Japan, or Belgium. I am stuck only buying from the US online store. Where as p2p's i can browse the music libraries from another user say in South Africa and stumble across music that peaks my interest perhaps enough that i'll search out how to purchase a legal copy. I would have no problem paying the exchange rate to get a song from another country, but the online stores do not allow it.

[skeptik]

Legal sites offer too much...

The legal sites offer too much control over my music. They want to control what I buy (selection) when I listen to it (limited life media) where I listen to it (limited device support) and how I share it (since when is the mix-tape anything but an excellent grass-roots promotion tool?)