New Canadian P2P Survey
Canada is the motherland of P2P interests. After all, a court decision there let P2P services off for any copyright infringement lawsuits. Even so, the latest research from POLLARA indicates that almost 30% of those who purchased less music in the past 12 months, claimed that downloading, file sharing and burning were the main reasons that their purchases had declined. While 52% of active music consumers in Canada who don’t download had purchased music in the past month, only 35% of active downloaders purchased music during that time. Other telling stats: Recent use of CD burners to copy music increased 18% to 35%, and almost half of downloaders said that all of the music they burned to CD came from sites like Kazaa.
COMMENTARY: Get Over It! Yes file sharing probably hurts CD sales, takes money from songwriters and record labels, and might even be illegal. But if we all don’t figure out how to become part of this revolution; we’re going to be about as valid as 8 Track tapes. Some labels like Vagrant figured out a long time ago that free streaming and downloads are great ways to draw traffic to their web site and to help people discover new bands and releases. The possibilities are endless if we get past caring about surveys like this Canadian one.
