As per the Commission’s study results, “our analysis shows that interactive streaming appears to be revenue-neutral for the recorded music industry.” Researchers Luis Aguiar and Joel Waldfogel examined weekly data for both the digital sales and torrents for 8,000 musicians between 2012 and 2013. When taken in conjunction with Spotify’s data, the two found, “For every 47 streams the number of illegal downloads decreases by one.” And considering Spotify’s impressive user numbers, these minute decreases actually add up to be quite significant.
Spotify, which has long insisted that its presence is a huge boon to the music industry at large, is no doubt thrilled with this latest piracy displacement theory. But of course, every conclusion should be taken with a grain of salt — as TorrentFreak points out, “streaming services also impact legal track sales on iTunes and other platforms,” which means that people who might otherwise feel compelled to buy Adele’s “Hello” are instead choosing to simply listen to it on repeat on Spotify.
Researchers note, “… our sales displacement estimates show that the losses from displaced sales are roughly outweighed by the gains in streaming revenue.”
So tough call, music biz — you’re caught between a rock and a hard place, and one’s name is Spotify, and the other’s is piracy.
