Oh Noes, They’re ALL Pirates!

According to the GuardianUK:

“More than half of young people copy the songs on their hard drives to friends and even more swap CD copies, according to research that reveals the huge challenge home copying poses to a music industry already battling internet file-sharing.”

AND

“Overall, 95% of the 1,158 people surveyed had engaged in some form of copying, including taking the music contents of a friend’s hard drive – 58% – and the more old-fashioned method of recording from the radio.”

Of course, this is causing the established record industry to call for tougher laws, more policing, bigger fines all in hopes of getting things back to the way they were…which is absolutely bat-shit crazy.  That’s like stirring your cream back out of your coffee.  It just isn’t going to happen.

Recording execs must feel a bit like the Stone-Age workers in this excellent skit from That Mitchell and Webb Look:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpeqPdVyQd0&hl=en]

Vinyl Outselling CDs?

There’s been a bunch of news lately about the resurgence of the vinyl LP, especially among younger buyers.  Now comes word that nearly one-half of all teens did not but one single CD in 2007.  Not a single one!

Clearly, this is not due to the growth of LP sales (at least not entirely) but more to the explosion in digital music.  Not only does “pirated” music continue to be a massive market but legal downloads are on the rise as well.

“The number of people buying music legally from online music stores jumped 21% to 29 million last year from 24 million in 2006, according to the study by NPD Group, a market research firm in Port Washington, N.Y.”

One big reason for this is that online distributors and labels have realized the need for DRM-free downloads.  They’re also playing around a lot with pricing structures as I mentioned yesterday with Amie Street. (check out this post for another scheme from indistr).