Music piracy
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Music piracy is still very much a thing, study finds

If you thought piracy was something from a distant era, before we had easy access to music for free on streaming service, we have news.

According to a new report by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), over one-third of consumers still pirate music. Wondering how and why?

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The IFPI study interviewed consumers from 18 countries with ages 16 to 64 to learn about their music-listening habits.

The findings show that people spend on average 2.5 hours a day listening to music, most on them through on-demand streaming. More specifically, 86 percent of them listen on services such as Spotify, Apple Music and the most popular of them all: YouTube.

Yes, 47 percent of the time people spend listening to on-demand music is on the video streaming service.

What are people listening to, you ask? Mostly pop, which is what 64 percent of people usually listening to. The second most popular genre is rock at 57 percent. At the bottom of the top 10 is metal with 19 percent of the answers.

Another curious finding of the study is that only 30 percent of consumers follow artists on social media. We’re definitely in that group.

Who pays for music? And who pirates?

According to IFPI, 57 percent to 16 to 24 year olds paid for streaming services. Among the ones who don’t, 35 percent say that all they want to listen to is on YouTube.

Here’s where the piracy begins, though. Most people who rip music say that they do it, so they can listen to it offline without paying for a subscription.

So, here are the piracy numbers: 38 percent of consumers still listen to pirate music, which they do by either ripping from streaming services (32 percent) or downloading music through cyberlockers or P2P (23 percent).

Still curious about how people listen to music nowadays? You can read the report in full here.

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