There was some buzz earlier this year concerning reports that new streaming apps, like Spotify, somehow decreased unauthorized access to music. And yet, a new study from BPI suggests unauthorized access to music continues to grow, despite the rise of authorized services like Spotify. Now, there are some caveats. BPI isn’t exactly known for being entirely accurate with data and these results are from an online survey. While you would think that fewer people would admit to unauthorized access in an online survey (people don’t like to fess up), counteracting that is the fact that BPI has incentives to suggest the issue of piracy is a big deal, as it’s pushing hard to force ISPs to kick people offline for file sharing. Still, what strikes me as interesting is that BPI still keeps insisting that this is a “problem,” without any evidence that this is true. The only real “problem” is the failure of the record labels that BPI represents to adjust their business models. If they did that, there wouldn’t be much of a problem at all. But, the labels don’t want to do that. They want the government to rescue them and to pretend they can keep doing business they way they always did.
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