A study conducted into the impact of streaming website spotify on the rates of pirated music downloads has been released today.
The study, focusing on several markets in Europe including Sweden, the Netherlands and Italy, found that that artists who delayed the release of new content on spotify, choosing to release it elsewhere first, suffered significantly higher rates of illegal downloads, such as “Rihanna’s Unapologetic and Taylor Swift’s Red sold only 1 copy per [illegal] BitTorrent download” while “One Direction’s album Take Me Home and Robbie Williams’ single Candy […] were successful on Spotify and sold 4 copies per BitTorrent download”.
The report also found that dedicated music pirates, about 10% of those people downloading illegally, account for almost half of illegal downloads.
The report also concluded that while many people can be dissuaded from using illegal downloading sites when services like spotify become available, in every market a dedicated core of people will remain who continue to pirate material.
Spotify was first launched in 2008 and offers free and premium services, allowing users to stream music while providing royalties payments to the copyright holders.