People are still pirating music. I didn’t find this statistic surprising upon first reading it. The pirating of music has been an age-old tradition. I remember the days of LimeWire that almost guaranteed your computer getting a virus. But, it was all worth it to get that free music. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) released its annual Music Consumer Insight Report. The report detailed numerous statistics about how humans interact with music.
One of the more noteworthy findings was that 38% of people obtain music through infringement methods. The most dominant form of this pirating being stream ripping. Which is when you use software to record audio on sites like YouTube. David Price, director of insight and analysis at IFPI, commented about this illegal consumption.
“People still like free stuff, so it doesn’t surprise us that there are a lot of people engaged in this. And it’s relatively easy to pirate music, which is a difficult thing for us to say.”
The report detailed other notable statistics about music. We on average listen to music 17.8 hours per week. 86% percent listen to music through on-demand streaming. Most consumers enjoy listening to their local music genres. Japan mostly listens to J-Pop while Variété Française dominates in France. If one thing is certain in life, it’s that people will forever try to get free music.