Music Piracy - U2 Case study (Nasrine)

Technical Convergence has allowed media to expand the ways in which they are targeting their audience through things such as digital distribution(downloads), apps, buying the hardware, streaming.

music industry revenue streams:

-radio advertising

-live music sector

-music retail; Amazon, iTunes, HMV

-licensing of music to third parties 

Spotify

A survey revealed in 2013 95% of music is illegally downloaded, 84% of illicit downloaders think artists deserve to be paid, 71% of users increasing their illicit downloads cite high prices as the reason

Piracy is steeling or illegally downloading a product instead of buying it. This has become more popular since the age of the internet has expanded into our everyday life.

Piracy has a huge effect on the institution, industry and the artist themselves in the sense that they are loosing money and if the big industries are losing money they reduces the artists budget which then means the artist isn't earning as much as they used to but the industry are managing to save more money. 

Industries have began to evolve in order to remain above the water line by turning to marketing ideas such as radio heads "pay what you like" album in rainbow and cold plays move to give away to promote their album. 

In the uk market alone, the record industry lost £180m in 2012, and will more than £1bn by the end of 2013. 

Beyonce losses £2.53 million in album sales

her new album has been illegally downloaded 240,000 times. 

U2 

In order to promote their new album and target a new era of audience, U2 have allowed their album to be downloaded for free on iTunes to everyone with an apple device. The album went out to a staggering 500 million itunes accounts.
Because this group are very wealthy they weren't losing money but in fact gaining publicity, coming across as this 'charitable' group who gave away their album for free instead of making people pay. When publicising, this also boosts recognition of u2 amongst the younger target audience as they are not that known amongst the new generation.
Ironically U2S' long term manager Paul McGuinness opined five years ago; "We are living in an era when 'free' is decimating the music industry and is starting to do the same to film, TV, and books. What has gone wrong?" 

Music Piracy Case Study