To Pirate or Purchase: Making Legal Music Appealing
Friday, October 2nd, 2009
The record industry is dying, according to…well, pretty much everyone.
The music industry, however, is most definitely not. If anything, the easy availability of music to the consumer has opened up the industry which was previously so dominated by the large (viewed by most as evil and tasteless) record companies who were filling the market with formulaic pop. Now, we as consumers have choices and our particular breed of music, whatever that may be, is much easier to access.
But yes- quite often this is accessed by illegal downloading.
While the record companies responded to this threat by suing everyone who dares to download- from high school students to families- research has shown that even with the threat of prosecution, the general public still don’t view music downloading as being ethically wrong. Aren’t we all such little rebels?
The industry is only now starting to come around to the fact online downloading is not going to disappear and are looking into new and inventive ways of capturing a audience and their cash. But how exactly do you go about getting people to willingly pay for something they can often get for free?
There have been many academic research papers looking into viable ways to encourage consumers to pay for their music. I have come up with 4 factors that determine a consumer’s willingness to pay for music legally. Take a gander at my lovely diagram below.
The first point I’d like to make is that the appeal of extra benefits offered with a legal purchase will increase a consumer’s willingness to pay. If bands offer a free extra, say, a free T-shirt with legal purchase of their CD, or legal download, this will increase the appeal of the legal purchase against the free option of an illegal download.
Take, for example, Radiohead’s offer of a limited edition “discbox” including a second disc from the recording sessions, vinyl and CD editions of the album and a hardcover book of artwork when consumers chose to pay over a certain amount to legally download “In Rainbows”. When I purchased tickets to see Daft Punk at the Riverstage in Brisbane, my tickets arrived with a lovely CD. More recently, if you pre-ordered Paul Dempsey’s album “Everything Is True” from iTunes you received an exclusive video of personal footage of Paul finishing the album. To put it simply, people love free stuff and are more willing to pay if they think they’re getting a bargain.
Point no. 2 on the pretty diagram: The higher the consumer considers themselves to be involved in music, the higher their willingness to purchase music products legally would be. This means if, for instance, you’re a musician, you have an understanding of the position of an artist and would not want to be depriving another of their livelihood. Nor do you want poor sound quality downloads if you are a massive fan of a band. Most music fans buy the music of their favourites as well as tickets and associated merchandise because the music forms part of their identity. Your identity is not something to take lightly, or cheaply.
- I kinda like my music….
The third, and perhaps most obvious point, is a consumer’s expendable income. If a music lover does not have a bank balance as great as their appetite for music, they are naturally going to lean towards the option of feeding this hunger for free and using their real money to buy 2-minute noodles. Research has shown that those on lower incomes are more likely to pirate rather than purchase to sample new music, but are more likely to purchase favourite songs legally, linking back to my previous point of a persons involvement with music.
Satisfaction with a sampled product is when a consumer trials an unknown artist/song by downloading it for free- be it legally or illegally. Depending on the level of satisfaction with the free, sampled music, this person will be more willing to pay for a related music product legally.
For instance, if you had a band recommended to you by a friend and then went and acquired the music by pirating an album. Through consuming and enjoying the music, you became a fan of the band, and you’d be more likely to pay to see them play if they came to your town and possibly buy their album at the show. If you had not sampled this music, you probably would not have paid for their album in the first place based purely on your friend’s recommendation.
One thing is for sure, there’s no going back. The industry must continue to move forward and embrace new business models, new ways of thinking, new ideas. It is by no means the end, but the beginning of a new kind of music industry where the consumer can help shape the change.
By Julia ‘Ju-ju Bean’ Bridger
