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60% of people don’t think musicians should earn from online music
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 24 July 2009
So this statistic is both interesting and slightly worrying for all you music folk. In a recent survey of 2000 web users, 60% said they didn’t think musicians should receive royalties when their music is downloaded online. None at all, people. Not even point zero zero zero zero one of a penny. Not even a jelly bean. Not even a window sticker. Wow. Consumers are stingy bastards, aren’t they?
The survey, conducted by ‘network integration specialist’ (whatever that means – they’re a techie firm) Telindsu, asked 2000 consumers a very specific question. Did they agree with this statement: “I think musicians should derive royalties from their albums, singles and music videos that are downloaded online”. Three fifths said they disagreed with that statement.
It’s critical that the question didn’t ask “should you, the consumer, have to pay” or “should record companies earn”, it was quite specific as to whether customers felt individual musicians should earn money from their online music. Even a cynical bunny like me is pretty surprised that many punters questioned a musician’s personal right to earn from their music. The only good news for music types is that even more people disagreed with the idea of TV companies earning royalties from online content.
I think it’s fair to say the copyright industries are doing a poor job at explaining why it is that the very concept of copyright exists in modern society – possibly because when you’re a copyright owner the idea that someone might question the very concept of copyright just seems insane. Plus of course copyright is such a dull tedious topic, it’s not the easiest thing to communicate. But with stats like this one, perhaps it’s something somebody should be doing.
Certainly Telindsu’s research showed much confusion with regards copyrights in the online world. And with 43% of those surveyed who do access online content never paying for it (so, either they are accessing ad-funded free services or unlicensed content), you can see why many are struggling to get their heads around the idea that net-based content might provide someone with a livelihood.
The Telindsu research tried to turn the tables to discuss ownership of the content everyday web users put online – because, of course, technically speaking the minute you start tweeting or posting public Facebook messages or MySpace blogs, you become a copyright owner. Despite some high profile complaining by some in the artistic community whenever a social network provider tries to tweak terms and conditions to give themselves rights in their users’ work, many people surveyed didn’t really think about the intellectual property that exists in their own ramblings, while others assumed Facebook or MySpace or whoever got ownership. Others assumed their content was in the public domain – so no copyrights exist at all – once it is online.
While the copyrights in most people’s tweets aren’t really worth anything, it is an interesting idea for the content industries to consider: would educating people about their own online IP rights make them more respectful of other people’s?
