Average Teen's iPod Has 842 Stolen Tracks

Steve said:
Alright, I’m calling BS on this one. I personally have a total of over 13,700+ songs on my PC and none of them are stolen. I find it damn near impossible to believe that 50% of all kids with MP3 players have 840+ stolen songs each.
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I'm calling BS on you calling BS.

You are an adult with a job. Prbably a decent paying job, or the [H] likely wouldn't have lasted this long.

I'm adult making a decent wage who also has several thousands of songs on my PC/DAP that are 100% bought and paid for.

However, I work at a university, and it is far form uncommon that the kids are wandering around with 5000 or so songs that they ripped off sititng on their PC or loaded on their bloated ipod. Most of them listen to music maybe ahour a day. Heck, it isn't that uncommon for some kids to have collections pushing a terabyte. They like music, it's a desirable thing, and they have access to it with zero perceived cost. So they tend to hoard it. Same thing with porn and DVDs. The difference is that with DVDs, we HAVE to give a crap because they cripple our network with the behavior. With the rest, we do just enough to avoid being sued because of the kids. The dishonest kids thend to have a lot of illegal content they haven't (and likely never will) get around to consuming.

Your average honest teen has an MP3 player that holds mostly empty space. They don't have the money to come even close to filling it at hand, or if they do, they tend to not buy more than they actually listen to.

Combine these to behaviors, and the average ammount of pirated content on the average device is quite high.
 
kinda like what manaknight said.

BANDS often benefit from sharing music. well. maybe not ALL bands. but the majority of them do. If someone asks me if i wanna go see "Tiny Robots With Big Guns" down at the club, chances are i wont go. If they give me some mp3s and say "listen, its awesome!" i might be persuaded. Chances are band is going to benefit more from me paying the admission to the club, possibly some merchandise, than from the CD sale (unless they happen to be TOTALLY indie, in which case they should be grateful i have even heard of them).

Sharing music really gouges into the record labels and stores. But they make the most off CDs sold and MP3s downloaded.

Not saying its right. Im just saying that the people who make the music arent REALLY the ones being ripped off.
 
I don't know what's sadder, the fact that kids steal that much music, or the fact that the average kid only has 1684 songs on an 80GB+ player. What a waste.
 
Current state of the US economy, I can certaintly say piracy will go up. Food is more important than purchasing intellectual property.
 
For all the people that think this is a legit number (or calling BS on me calling BS ;) ) why aren't more kids being sued by the RIAA???

The facts are currently that, out of thousands of kids at each school, the lawsuits hit 15 - 20 kids at each school and NOT the biggest offenders.

So, if the average kid has 840+ damn songs that are illegal on his MP3 player...why not more lawsuits by the RIAA? You'd think with odds like these (every school / half the kids....or according to some of you...100% of everyone you know) the RIAA would be in litigation heaven. Yet we only see a couple schools hit with a max 20 or so John Doe affadvits.

If this info were true we'd have HUNDREDS of lawsuits a week against students in all 50 states. Don't you think?
 
I did a project for statistics on this and it came back way way way over 50% was stolen. The issue is that either someone has almost all legal or almost all stolen.
 
jroe52 said:
ok... so you can rape a goat, take that goat, make a kid rape it, then you rape the kid while raping the goat... then have the kid butcher the animal live within city limits... then kill the kid and bury them in your backyard, and you'll serve less years in jail than if you stole 10,000 mp3s... come on.. thats justice?
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WTF ? Even if that's an analogy, that's a weird analogy
 
Steve said:
For all the people that think this is a legit number (or calling BS on me calling BS ;) ) why aren't more kids being sued by the RIAA???

The facts are currently that, out of thousands of kids at each school, the lawsuits hit 15 - 20 kids at each school and NOT the biggest offenders.

So, if the average kid has 840+ damn songs that are illegal on his MP3 player...why not more lawsuits by the RIAA? You'd think with odds like these (every school / half the kids....or according to some of you...100% of everyone you know) the RIAA would be in litigation heaven. Yet we only see a couple schools hit with a max 20 or so John Doe affadvits.

If this info were true we'd have HUNDREDS of lawsuits a week against students in all 50 states. Don't you think?
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Litigation costs money. Lawsuits are there to strategically strike fear for as much effect as possible, not to bring every offender down. This isn't to say that is effective, it isn't, but I would guess that that is the reasoning, the same reasoning for strategic busts or companies suing bloggers for leaked company info (the point is to scare the everloving crap out of the employees, not shut down the blogger).

The fact of the matter is that you and I grew up in a time when people actually paid for music, and that's that. We also made mix tapes and for some reason that wasn't a big deal, but that's another topic of discussion. I still buy my music on CD, and the only things I would consider downloading from a pay service are podcasts (which are free anyway) and audiobooks. That said, downloading music without paying for it is casual and easy, and it doesn't surprise me at all that the numbers mentioned are so high.
 
Steve said:
If this info were true we'd have HUNDREDS of lawsuits a week against students in all 50 states. Don't you think?
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It's probably not a matter of "finding" people who steal music, that's pretty common. For the RIAA it's got to be a matter of manpower. I bet they would love to serve those "pay 3,000 dollars and delete all of your music now or we'll take you to court" letters to everyone who does, but the process to serve even a Jane/John Doe has got to be pretty time consuming.

I think the really surprising thing here is that the average UK teen has 842 bought and paid for songs on their ipod's. Even assuming 50 cents a song that's over 400 dollars worth of purchased music per ipod. That can't be right.
 
LaChupacabra said:
I think the really surprising thing here is that the average UK teen has 842 bought and paid for songs on their ipod's. Even assuming 50 cents a song that's over 400 dollars worth of purchased music per ipod. That can't be right.
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I still live at home, and at least 75% of the music on my iPod is ripped CD's that my parents have spent the greater part of 25 years collecting.

The other 25% is either stuff I have legitimately bought, priceless live bootleg concerts, or...;)
 
Governing bodies love fighting wars that are impossible to win. From the war on terror to the war on drugs to the war on piracy.

They just can't think of a way, either they aren't smart enough, it's too expensive or too difficult to do these things correctly.

Just because the RIAA can't think of a way to make money off free music downloads, doesn't mean there isn't a way.

The MP3 format will never go away. Meth will never go away. Terrorists will never go away. Deal with it, find out why people are making and distributing music, drugs and terror and try to work with them to solve the problem instead of trying to stop them by force. Force doesn't work very effectively on any of the 3 fronts.
 
If they tried to bust everyone who downloaded music it would flood the courts and after a few months all cases would be dropped and they wouldn't have much ammunition to strike fear into people.

If they were smart they would treat it more like speeding and fine people but not redickless amounts. Like if I was cought with 20 songs I would have to pay for the price of the songs 20bucks with processing fees and taxes and shipping and handling and renters insurance and convenience fee and what ever else and have it com out to about 20X the cost of the music so for 20 songs it would be a $400 fine. I know I stopped speeding....as much after I lost my license and had to pay some fees.

But they don't think much instead they try and fine someone with 400 bucks in thier bank account 72million bucks.
 
That's IF, IF, IF they can fit that many mp3's onto an player. Unlike a lot of music out there, all of my music is "volume normalized" and converted to a steady bit rate of 128bitx44hz. Which at least gives me a bit of uniformity.
 
LaChupacabra said:
It's probably not a matter of "finding" people who steal music, that's pretty common.
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Yup, strategic busting is the point, the same reasoning that leads to occasional operations on criminals like drug dealers or prostitutes. That sort of thing is in waves and is there to put fear into them and put them on notice, but in no way is it constant. That would cost too much to enforce and litigate absolutely everyone, not to mention the strain it would put on our already stretched out jail and prison system.
 
So I make all my kids (I got 3) pay for the music on iTunes for their iPods.

Last week, one of them had an iPod die, and wanted to buy a non apple mp3 player, and asked me how would they get their music into the mp3 player.

This week i bought GRiD, and the game wont work properly on my system because of the secureROM or whatever crap is on the game.

So now I am wondering, if it is the right time to teach my children about Civil Disobedience. ;)
 
DrVal said:
Who is going to post on any forum especially one as highly traced as this one that they do anything illegal.
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Me.

6000 songs on my iPod - 90% illegally downloaded.

I support my artists by seeing them live.
 
oh, before I get raked over the coals, I DONT think that my desire for DRM free digital content is at all comparable to any of the real struggles that required civil disobedience.

I am just trying to make a point that I HOPE that corporations that punish legit consumers with drm nonsense just die of a fast bankruptcy death!

It is just hard to tell my kids not to buy their fav music because i disagree with some dumb a$$ corporate decision.

But I really hope that soon they will stop buying drm infested music as protest.

But why would they do that when I, as a bad example bought a DRM infested game cause I wanted to play it. Man, it is tough being a parent sometimes ;)
 
I think the number is about right...I dont know a single person who purchases music at this point.

It just goes back to what is now the classic argument(that real isn't an argument)
Buy vs steal.

If the music industry wants to stop this in my opinion they just need the magic number.
25, cents that is.
No art,no liner notes, no advertising, no endcaps cut all the crap.
A quarter a song I think is low enough for most people (including students) to consider buying the songs.
20 songs for $5 VS 20 songs for $19.80

And who can afford music with the price of gas, jeze:mad:
 
Nemesis999 said:
840 songs * ~45,000,000 teens * $750/song = $28,350,000,000,000

Amazing how their damages can exceed $30 trillion from one sub-group alone when the entire worldwide industry is what, 10% of that?
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If songs weren't so easy to get, kids wouldn't have nearly as much.
 
I'll be honest, I didn't read through the whole thread since I'm short on time, but I'll go ahead and throw my 2 cents in by reiterating what I'm sure has already been said a few times.

The music and movie industry as a whole needs to just wake up already and get with the program. This is all incredibly simple, and it completely flabbergasts me to think that even with getting paid billions of dollars every year, they still can't seem to grasp this and make wiser decisions.

I have absolutely NO objection to buying music. What started all of this was the fact that artists became incredibly lazy, and instead of putting their heart and soul into 15-20 tracks, then going back and making each one into a masterpiece before putting it onto an album, they decided to take the quick route to riches. Now all these "artists" care about is getting paid, so they make one or two songs that are really good, and fill the rest of the album up with 2 minute tracks that sound like garbage and are NOTHING like the one or two singles they play on the radio to get peoples attention.

It didn't take most people very long to say "hey, I think I just got ripped off here paying $15 for only two songs that are worth listening to" and deciding it'd be better to just go online and download the songs they wanted instead of the entire album.

Did the music industry capitalize on this idea? No, they became frightened that their ivory towers would come crashing down, and that they'd only be able to afford three or four cars that cost as much as the average persons house instead of a whole garage full of them. It wasn't until years later that they finally started coming out with legal MP3s, and I was really excited when I first heard about them. Then I found out that they wanted to charge me $.99 PER TRACK, which equals just as much, sometimes even more, than the entire real CD in stores. Only without the actual physical media and extras that come with it. That's ridiculous.

If the music industry really wants to put a stop to illegal downloading, and earn their customers back, then first they need to make sure their artists are putting out quality music. Then they need to offer it to the public at an affordable price.

This is what it will take to get me to start buying music from them again (rather than buying it from my russian friends):

DRM Free Music. There's no way in hell I'm buying some music, only to have you try and tell me where I can listen to it, or how long I can listen to it.

$0.20 per song, with discounts for buying entire albums. I'm simply not going to pay $15 for a full album, not ever again. Especially if I'm not getting anything real that I can hold in my hands.

Album art and ID3 tags fully filled out. If I'm going to buy it from you, it needs to be done right.

That's about it. Is that really too much to ask? I would never in my life again download another song illegally, if I could buy it under those reasonable terms.

If they had actually done this from the beginning, instead of trying to sue 5 year old girls who don't even own computers, or people that have been dead for years, then they'd have so much extra cash right now they could buy an island for each of their janitors.
 
Blu_Haze said:
This is what it will take to get me to start buying music from them again (rather than buying it from my russian friends):

DRM Free Music. There's no way in hell I'm buying some music, only to have you try and tell me where I can listen to it, or how long I can listen to it.

$0.20 per song, with discounts for buying entire albums. I'm simply not going to pay $15 for a full album, not ever again. Especially if I'm not getting anything real that I can hold in my hands.

Album art and ID3 tags fully filled out. If I'm going to buy it from you, it needs to be done right.
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I agree with all these points, and would add another: LOSSLESS!!! For goodness sake, there's no excuse to not offer this. Apple Lossless MPEG-4 can be played in every iPod/Zune out there, offer a plethora of excellent tagging options, and have very respectable file size. 99.9% of the population can instantly use the files, and the nutcases who like FLAC, or use off-brand players, can easily convert to any lossless/lossy format their heart desires. Giving me a 192kbps MP4 is just adding more insult to the high prices and DRM injury.
 
i don't call BS. I work in the pc industry. 90% of all pc and devices we work on have bootleg music and movies on them.
 
SpeedyVV said:
Last week, one of them had an iPod die, and wanted to buy a non apple mp3 player, and asked me how would they get their music into the mp3 player.
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This. Apple started wrong. Even if "a lot" of itunes music is DRM free now, most people have reverted to other sources and arent eager to change.
 
InorganicMatter said:
I agree with all these points, and would add another: LOSSLESS!!! For goodness sake, there's no excuse to not offer this. Apple Lossless MPEG-4 can be played in every iPod/Zune out there, offer a plethora of excellent tagging options, and have very respectable file size. 99.9% of the population can instantly use the files, and the nutcases who like FLAC, or use off-brand players, can easily convert to any lossless/lossy format their heart desires. Giving me a 192kbps MP4 is just adding more insult to the high prices and DRM injury.
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Oh, you're absolutely right! I knew I was forgetting something in my little rant. :eek:

They also need to give end users the choice of which format to purchase the music in. If all you need is a 192kbps LAME MP3, that's fine. However if you're an audiophile with thousands of dollars worth of equipment, and can actually notice a difference in quality, then buying it in a lossless WAV/MP4/FLAC/etc then you should have that option as well.

This could actually be accomplished very easily, by simply having each other their music files stores ONLY in a lossless .wav format, and then having the server quickly format it to .mp3/.mp4/.flac/etc right after a user adds that song to their cart. That way they don't have to spend money on extra space to hold a dozen copies of each song in different formats.

I already know of some russian music stores that do this, and offer the songs for .20 (sometimes even .10 or less) per track, so there's no reason why the recording industry can't do it as well.
 
I think having only 2 types of sources should be enough (alac and aac for Apple, WMA and WMA-Lossless for MS, etc), as long as it's DRM free, and one of the file types is lossless, conversion to a different format for changing DAPs is easily feasible.
 
Seriously, how many of these "kids" did they find that admitted to having stolen tracks so that they could mine this data?

What a flagrant load of bullshit.. Not that the # of people might have pirated.. just the fact that they came up with the data.
 
There are people paying for music!? 50 % seems low I thought it would be at least 90 % honestly.
 
dagas said:
There are people paying for music!? 50 % seems low I thought it would be at least 90 % honestly.
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Absolutely. If I like an artist's music, I am more than happy to pay them to produce more of the good stuff. That being said, I do not believe in the $15 "buy before you try" gamble thing that the industry is still trying to push. I believe in trying before you buy, and if I really like the music, I'm more than happy to pay money to support good artists, and get a lossless copy. I spend loads of money on good, high-quality inde music every year.
 
InorganicMatter said:
Absolutely. If I like an artist's music, I am more than happy to pay them to produce more of the good stuff. That being said, I do not believe in the $15 "buy before you try" gamble thing that the industry is still trying to push. I believe in trying before you buy, and if I really like the music, I'm more than happy to pay money to support good artists, and get a lossless copy. I spend loads of money on good, high-quality inde music every year.
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To bad the recording industries assholes of america take most of the money you spend and not the artists you want to support.
 
z3r0- said:
To bad the recording industries assholes of america take most of the money you spend and not the artists you want to support.
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Actually, most of my money goes to Swedish and German labels, so I like to imagine that the artist sees some of my money. :)
 
Meh. I downloaded in college just like everyone else. But I still bought music too. Now that I'm out I probably spend $200-500 every two weeks on music, especially now that I've only recently started collecting jazz. Call it a rationalization if you want, but I believe I've made up for past downloads. :)
 
Um, after spending two semester in the dorms at a public Uni, I think the number is probably double that. Maybe just 800 on their ipod, but thousands on the hard drive. It's absurd.
 
mdameron said:
Um, after spending two semester in the dorms at a public Uni, I think the number is probably double that. Maybe just 800 on their ipod, but thousands on the hard drive. It's absurd.
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Especially ones that have their own private intranet hubs with thousands over users on them, downloading at 100Mbps.
 
blade52x said:
Especially ones that have their own private intranet hubs with thousands over users on them, downloading at 100Mbps.
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R Tunes (?) = gigs of shit in seconds. I never did it, but I had roommates with hundreds of gigs and would just download from people down the hall.
 
bboynitrous said:
I believe it as well. I pay for all my music off itunes now and just crack the DRM to play on my truck's MP3 player. Itunes has a lot of DRM free music now, but apparently it's still rampant on most of their older albums. And I don't give a fuck what they say, I am not going to buy all that compatible itunes junk just to play music in my truck with DRM. Plus I know some people that still use limewire and other places to download music.
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Amazon is much better, and has no DRM.
 
Who cares.

I bet a secretarys computer has 100's of word documents on it and a web designers computer has 100's of html documents.
 
BitTorrent traffic is estimated to be anywhere from 50-75% of bandwidth usage on the internet. You're surprised that people have a lot of pirated music?

I had a huge CD collection. And it's all on my computer in MP3 format -- fortunately, because most of them were stolen from me.

But then again, why would anyone ever, ever pay for music these days? Fifteen minutes, tops, and you have an album for free with art, correct metadata, etc from BitTorrent.

DRM is driving the music industry out of business. Not to be an ubernerd or anything, but to quote Leia -- the more they tighten their grip, the more it will slip through their fingers.

As long as the record labels continue payola on massively / nationally integrated radio and push the songs they choose and the artists they pick, as long as local radio stations keep disappearing and local bands have little to no chance of rising to the top through aggregated audiences, as long as the music is simply not worth the price...piracy will reign.

In a free market the only reason a black market ever exists is if artificial price controls over-value a product.
 
Steve said:
For all the people that think this is a legit number (or calling BS on me calling BS ;) ) why aren't more kids being sued by the RIAA???

The facts are currently that, out of thousands of kids at each school, the lawsuits hit 15 - 20 kids at each school and NOT the biggest offenders.

So, if the average kid has 840+ damn songs that are illegal on his MP3 player...why not more lawsuits by the RIAA? You'd think with odds like these (every school / half the kids....or according to some of you...100% of everyone you know) the RIAA would be in litigation heaven. Yet we only see a couple schools hit with a max 20 or so John Doe affadvits.

If this info were true we'd have HUNDREDS of lawsuits a week against students in all 50 states. Don't you think?
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To be honest I don't know what it isn't more. They should be able to find a lot more people. I know of at least 30 people that download music, movies or software. None of them have been busted yet. Kinda wish one or two of them would though to show the rest.

Hell, they should be able to monitor traffic from limewire for a day or two and get enough people to be in court every day for the next 35 years.
 
Also -- I'd like to present a theory. Declining record sales haven't been caused by illegal mp3 downloading, or even greatly exacerbated by it. Instead, declining diversity of music and a controlled music industry with little originality did.

Americans, and people in general, don't have a problem paying for a quality product. When people begin stealing things (or even just not buying them) it generally means there's a problem with the producer, not the consumer.
 
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