Free Spotify and YouTube Users Are Now a Bigger Challenge Than Music Pirates

[Matrix]

Traffic to pirate sites is dropping significantly in Italy, new data suggest. This trend is in part the result of local site blocking efforts. While piracy is becoming less of an issue, Italian music industry group FIMI signals problems of another order. This includes the challenge to convert free YouTube and Spotify users into paying consumers.

Pirate site blocking has proven to be a rather effective copyright enforcement tool in many countries.

Italy, one of the European frontrunners, has taken a particularly active approach. In recent years, thousands of domain names have been added to the nation’s pirate blocklist, following complaints from a wide range of copyright holders.

It is not just the numbers that set Italy apart, the blocking mechanism itself is unique as well. To have a website blocked, rightsholders can ask the local telecoms watchdog Agcom to issue an order, without need for a trial.

Instead of dealing with blockades in court, Agcom has the power to grant injunctions without judicial overview, which it does on a regular basis. Over the past year alone, 385 blocking orders were issued by the telecoms watchdog.

The site blocking efforts have obviously decreased traffic to the targeted sites, but according to data released by Agcom, the number of visits to all pirate sites combined has dropped too. As shown below, the number of mobile and desktop visits to pirate sites decreased more than a third (35%) between 2018 and 2019. 

The downward traffic trend is visible across all types of piracy sites but, logically, the traffic drop for the blocked sites is most pronounced. The graph below shows that the number of visitors to blocked sites tank swiftly after a new blocking order is issued. 

For example, in January 2019 2conv.com (blue line) and flv2mp3.by (green line) were blocked, and soon after, the visitor numbers went down. 

Agcom and various entertainment industry groups are happy with the overall impact. They believe that, after many years, they finally managed to get a grip on piracy.

TorrentFreak spoke to Enzo Mazza, chief at Italian music industry group FIMI, who believes that a combination of site blocking and educational campaigns has paid off.

“The first major blockade targeted the Pirate Bay in 2008 and the case was confirmed by the Supreme Court. In terms of market impact, site blocking has proven to be effective in conjunction with the increase of the legal offer,” Mazza says.

“The Agcom regulation played a great role, also in terms of education and awareness. Most of the blocked sites have a landing page, created by Agcom and shown by the ISPs, which explains visitors how to reach legal sites.”

While this is positive news for the Italian music industry, it doesn’t mean that all is well. Mazza informs us that there are bigger problems than piracy. Ironically, these problems are linked to the legal alternatives many pirates have switched to. 

“The main issue here is not piracy. It’s how to convert people from free YouTube and Spotify accounts to premium services,” Mazza says.”Italy is a country where the ‘culture of free’ is radicated and it’s not easy to drag people into a subscription model.”

Nearly 90% of Italian music consumers use YouTube to stream music, which is a problem for the industry. While these people are enjoying music legally, record labels would like to see these people converted into paying customers.

“Conversion rates are still below the global average and this is a major challenge for the industry. We are urging in particular Spotify to do more in terms of promotional campaigns in order to engage new premium customers,” Mazza says. 

So, while the website blocking efforts have helped to bring piracy rates down, this isn’t immedially resulting in much more revenue.

The next step is to convert these same people into paying subscribers. However, this should be done witch caution, as cutting the free options could simply drive people back to pirate sites. 

 

 VIEW: Original Article.

[neofita]

in Italy there are too many taxes and too much unemployment, f**k paid services and long life for pirates 

[steven36]

4 hours ago, Mach1 said:

“The main issue here is not piracy. It’s how to convert people from free YouTube and Spotify accounts to premium services,”

The problem is many  pirates thank blocking ads on  free Spotify with mods is piracy .  You go over to the piracy  sub and they talking about it all the time . Only thing mobile mods do is remove ads  and change your user agent to desktop  so you can get a few  features that is free  only on desktop . Its not really cracked were you can listen to 320k  like i can get from Russian music streaming sites for free . Same as YouTube it's a good place to go try out new music but to download it i  i use real  piracy to get better quality, but most pirates seem to not care if  all free legal music degrades the sound quality  a lot  and you can put those fake upscale mp3 you get from YouTube in spek and see they  are fake they want pass.

 

https://old.reddit.com/r/hiphopheads/comments/2t88ne/a_quick_guide_to_checking_the_real_bitrate_of/

http://spek.cc/

 

Why would i buy Spotify it has DRM ?  if people want to buy music go buy a CD and rip it too Flac and mp3  and share it that way people who don't have the money to buy it will have it too. This is how we had music long before any legal sites existed.  The music industry wants there cake and it eat it too . Most people pirate music because it free .Most people use use free legal music portals because it free . No free will = a rise in piracy back in the 1st decade of the 2000s everyone used Limewire and done it many people even bought Limewire Pro  well dumb ones did , smart ones  used Limewire  to download pro for free or went to the warez boards were we posted it .But i know people who bought it .   

 

The thing is i would rather upload you some mp3s than disclose my sources .Always when  they make the news a whole lot the  music industry goes after them.  YouTube and  Spotify keeps the heat off us real music pirates sources because the masses  will do whats easy . Spoon feeding people who don't know how to pirate just makes it hard on those who know how to do it already  . That what search engines is for  the info is there  that's how i found it to begin with.

[Infinite_Vision]

I haven't to mainstream music in a long time.  So much trash and so much non-sense that is put out there.  How many time can you see something singing or rapping about the same thing: money, occult, girl, sex, etc.  I have my collection of old school music on my playlist which is good enough for me.  I don't even listen to the radio as they are always cycling the same music over and over again every hour of the day.  They always putting the "it" artist that the music industry want to push or promote.  It's not always how good you are but rather are you a favorite of the music industry.

 

Steven36, I met Lite during the Kazaa Lite era who introduced me to Nsane who started the forum.   I missed Shought too.  For me, there isn't any good music to even pirate.  it just the same thing over and over.  You can see which artists have sold their soul to the industry.   I just listen to my classic now where artists can actually sing instead auto-tune music.  It will always be a cat and mouse game.  Someone finds a way to block and then someone finds a way around it.  

[steven36]

2 hours ago, Infinite_Vision said:

Steven36, I met Lite during the Kazaa Lite era who introduced me to Nsane who started the forum.   I missed Shought too.  For me, there isn't any good music to even pirate.  it just the same thing over and over.  You can see which artists have sold their soul to the industry.   I just listen to my classic now where artists can actually sing instead auto-tune music.  It will always be a cat and mouse game.  Someone finds a way to block and then someone finds a way around it.  

I used Kazza Lite By Random Nut  back in  2002 long before nsane version came out i done switch to Lime Wire by then

 

Quote

 

Kazaa Lite was originally created by Random Nut who did the K++ Loader, Rocko and Sarkie who did the binary hacking, and Paul who did the installer. It was shut down by Sharman Networks on December 7, 2003. The final version is v2.4.3.

• Based on Kazaa Media Desktop 2.0.2
• No bundled spyware or adware.

 

K++ was a memory patch / extension manager that was a part of the original Kazaa Lite made by Random Nut

K++ and nsane versions include:

• Based on Kazaa Media Desktop 2.0.2
• No bundled spyware or adware.
• No search limit restrictions or multisource limits.
• Participation level locked to 1000 (maximum).
• Better multi-source downloading.
• Unreachable sources are no longer stored in the .dat files

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazaa_Lite#K-Lite

 

 

Also I used Imesh mod by Dr Damn back in 2002.

 

Dr. Damn cleans house for file-swappers

https://www.zdnet.com/article/dr-damn-cleans-house-for-file-swappers/

 

I knew Lite  and Shought from Appznet as well as from here  I join here to learn about cracking NOD32  .

[DKT27]

Keep the premium version cheap, without any downloading restrictions and file restrictions and you will see a lot more people buying it.