Visits to music piracy websites increased by more than 13% last year, according to a report. Most of those visits were to sites that allow users to download audio from YouTube URLs.
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This weekend, dozens of artists are preparing to arrive in Los Angeles for the 66th annual Grammy Awards. Trevor Noah will tell jokes, musicians will get trophies - and somewhere on the internet, someone will be downloading their music for free.
There were more than 17 billion visits to music piracy sites worldwide last year, a staggering 13% increase from 2022, according to the research company Muso. After years of falling music piracy due to streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music, this increase is somewhat surprising. According to Muso's report, the increase shows "the industry's urgent need to understand the changes that continue to drive consumers towards unauthorized channels."
Music piracy had generally declined over the past seven years, mainly because artists and labels stopped offering exclusive album releases on specific music platforms, says Muso CEO Andy Chatterley. Back in 2016, albums like Beyoncé's Lemonade and Frank Ocean's Blonde would be released as exclusive to Tidal or Apple Music and then "pirated" by users who didn't use those services. Following a warning from Universal Music Group CEO Lucian Grainge denouncing the practice, the exclusives were reduced. So did the piracy. Now, however, it's back with a vengeance.
Chatterley says there are many factors that cause recurrence, but suggests that in some cases it's a matter of people who can't afford music streaming services. In other cases is a matter of high mobile data costs in some areas, leading people to download tracks to their phones via Wi-Fi instead of listening to them via streaming or even a mobile data connection. It establishes a particularly surprising statistic in Muso's findings: the 40% of the music piracy that the company tracked was directed at sites that "steal" the audio from YouTube videos and turn it into downloadable music files. This accounts for most of the piracy, according to Muso's data - more than illegal streams, torrents or other forms of web downloads. "It's a really significant problem," Chatterley says.
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When asked about Muso's findings, YouTube spokesman Jack Malon noted that once the service is informed of stream-ripping tools, steps are taken to block offending domains and develop techniques and methods to stop their use. YouTube also has a staff dedicated to sending cease and desist notices and recovery notices to those behind such applications. "We devote significant resources to whistleblowing and IP management tools, and we are working closely with other industry leaders to set the standard for how tech companies fight piracy," Malon says. "We remain committed to continually strengthening these efforts."
Muso will not disclose which mining sites it monitored for its latest report. Chatterley says that this information is being kept secret in order to avoid promoting piracy services. The company will also not disclose how many downloads the mining sites were responsible for. To provide context, he offered torrent numbers for 2023.
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For example, the Taylor Swift, the apparent phenomenal artist is nominated for six Grammys this weekend and, despite not releasing a new album in 2023, had six of the top 20 best-selling albums in the US. Her 1989 release (Taylor's Version), the re-recorded version of her powerful pop home recording from 2014, sold nearly 2.9 million copies - the biggest-selling album of any year in nearly a decade.
The same album was compromised and downloaded with torrent more than 275,000 times. (The original 2014 version of the album 430,077 times.)
The other Swift albums on that list also saw large torrent numbers. For example, 2022's Midnights. This album was compromised and downloaded with torrent 493,000 times about last year.
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In fact, most of Swift's most popular albums - Speak Now, Red, Folklore, Lover, Evermore - between 400,000 and 700,000 times. Overall, Swift's albums were compromised by something less than 5 million times The 2023, which seems like a small amount when you consider that Swift sold 19 million copies in the U.S. alone during that period, according to Luminate data. Then remember that torrents are the smallest part of music piracy worldwide. Only about 3% of visits to piracy sites worldwide lead to someone searching for a torrent.
And now that piracy seems to be on the rise - again. It's been almost 25 years since Napster changed the way people acquire music. In that time, dozens of options have emerged for how to buy and play songs on the stream, but getting them from the internet may never go away.
Source :: wired
