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EU report reckons €170 million lost to music piracy in 2014

By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 26 May 2016

Those missing the days when it was all about “look at all the money we’re losing because of bloody piracy”, rather than “look at all the money we’re losing because of fucking YouTube”, here’s something that will warm your nostalgic hearts. A new report on the music sector from the European Union Intellectual Property Office concludes: “look at all the money we’re losing because of bloody piracy”. Bloody piracy. It’s the new YouTube.

The EUIPO’s Executive Director, António Campinos, says: “The question of whether piracy reduces or increases sales of recorded music has been the subject of many studies with contradictory results”. He’s right you know, lots of contradictory results. “Our study’s results are in line with the prevailing consensus”, he continued, seemingly now ignoring the past contradictory findings, “and find that piracy reduces the revenue of legitimate industry in both digital and physical formats”.

I used to try to work out what the methodology was for these ‘money lost by piracy’ studies, but they were always dubious, and these days I’m too distracted by all the free music on YouTube to bother.

But if you’re wondering, this report reckons that: “€170 million, or 5.2% of all music sales, were lost in the EU in 2014 due to music piracy. Overall, in music sales, €57 million were lost in physical formats (eg CDs) and €113 million in digital formats. This was equivalent to 2.9% of all music sales in physical formats and 8.8% of all music sales in digital formats”.

So, there you go. Fans of retro record industry gripes can download the full report here.