Old music piracy practices are making a comeback amid the coronavirus
Music piracy seems largely to have dropped in the wake of growing streaming service presences from Spotify, Apple Music and others but amid the coronavirus pandemic, numbers are falling even more while showing an interesting trend towards the past.
According to a report from Rolling Stone, global media piracy analytics company Muso revealed their data and after requesting music-based information the publication is noticing people who are stealing music are returning to peer-to-peer torrent sites.
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In the report, they’re noting that movie piracy has shot up by 41 percent in the US by the final week of March compared to the previous month.
Rolling Stone requested the equivalent data from Muso for the music side of things and the numbers aren’t nearly the same but do show interesting trends.
They note that cloud-based streaming piracy has been the fastest growing form in the music industry over the past several years.
In 2017, illegal streaming sites made up over 41 percent of all music piracy visits.
Now, during the pandemic music piracy has actually dropped. In the final week of March, piracy numbers lowered worldwide compared to February.
Numbers were down 11.84 percent in Europe, 19.72 percent in Japan, and down 5.84 percent in the UK and 1.01 percent in the US.
Streaming stats dropped even for legitimate uses in the beginning stages of lockdowns too though. Last week, Spotify noted to investors that “in hard-hit markets like Italy and Spain, we saw a notable decline in Daily Active Users and consumption,” and further said “over the last few weeks, we’ve seen listening start to rebound, and in many markets, consumption has meaningfully recovered.”
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Muso’s data reflects the same changes with piracy in Spain falling 4.89 percent in March.
Most interestingly though, music-related visits to torrenting platforms like the Pirate Bay are shooting up.
US torrenting site visits increased by 15.62 percent with 1.308 million visits for the last week of February compared to 1.513 million in March.
Worldwide this is happening too. India saw a 23.43 percent increase and the UK went up 18.53 percent. Canada increased by 17.54 percent and across the EU, 7.61 percent. Spain saw the largest increase at 26.40 percent.
Muso CEO Andy Chatterley says he believes ownership of music might be related to the numbers.
“One stat that anecdotally jumps out is that Germany bucks the global trend, with visits to torrenting sites for music down 6.09% in the last week of March,” says Chatterley.
“It’s interesting for context to think that Germany was quite late to switch away from physical music and to embrace streaming,” adds Chatterley. “It also makes you wonder if people are craving ownership more than usual right now, and whether that’s been caused or amplified by COVID-19, which may be having an effect on people’s financial status. The lockdown could also potentially be affecting subscription fatigue.”
You can read the full report here.
What do you think of the trends around music piracy shifting? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
