The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has released a new report outlining the current state of legal and digital music in the UK, and its findings detail the enormous obstacles it faces in trying to fight the problem of illegal file-sharing.
Though the UK boasts some 67 legal music services it says that the overall level of illegal downloading is on the rise.
“Illegal downloading continues to rise in the UK,” says BPI Chief Executive, Geoff Taylor. “It is a parasite that threatens to deprive a generation of talented young people of their chance to make a career in music, and is holding back investment in the fledgling digital entertainment sector.”
However, standard P2P applications and services aren’t the problem, their level of usage has remained steady, its the use of cyberlockers and unauthorized MP3 pay sites that is “rising alarmingly.”
Even more troubling for the BPI is that a majority of illegal downloaders use search engine giant Google to find free music. In fact, according to consumer research from Harris Interactive, 58% of them do.
“While in some cases there is a small level of technological know-how necessary to acquire music illegally from the internet, in most instances it is worryingly straightforward and can be as simple as typing the name of the track or artist into a search engine,” reads the report.
It observes that methods to illegally acquire copyrighted material has “evolved” and “diversified” over the years, and that unsurprisingly search engines have become another source like any other.
Last month the BPI proved the point by doing test searches for the UK’s top 20 singles or albums, followed by the query “mp3″ over the course of a week and found that “on average 17 of the first 20 Google results for singles and 14 of 20 search results for albums were links to known illegal sites.”
The report notes that Google even went the extra mile by in many cases auto-completing the search query with phrases like “torrent,” and thereby actively directing users towards free illegal downloads.
To be fair, Google did declare recently that it plants to begin “Making Copyright Work Better Online” in order to “better address” the “bad apples who use the Internet to infringe copyright,” and that it would specifically “prevent terms that are closely associated with piracy from appearing in auto-complete.”
What the BPI admits, yet simultaneously fails to acknowledge, is that illegal downloading will always “evolve” and “diversify.” Even the simplest form of illegal downloading, via email attachments, will continue unabated.
What the BPI ought to do is focus less on illegal downloading and more on what music fans want. They want music when and where they want, and all at a fair price. When it comes to a fair price the BPI ought to also consider the recent proposal made by Rob Dickens, former head of Warner Music in the UK. Dickens suggested a a “micro-economy” in which album prices are “radically reduced,” and the resulting increase in sales volume more than making up for the drop in prices.
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