Categories
End User internet media piracy

94 percent say they would choose a legal music site over a pirate one

Bit of a long post title but this is the feedback from research conducted in June on consumer behaviour and preferences in respect of music downloading.  The research was commissioned by music site We7 and conducted on 2012 consumers aged 16 to 60 over 7 days in June 2009.

Its key findings make very interesting reading:

  • 46% of UK music fans do not understand how to legally consume music online
  • 64% do not know how to stream and share music legally
  • 85% of consumers are happy to listen to a short ad in exchange for unlimited access to free music that they can share with others
  • 94% say they would choose a legal music site over a pirate one if it had the same range of music and was easy to use
  • Women and those over 55 are least likely to stream – 85% say they don’t know how and are unlikely to try
    64% of 16-24 year olds share music with friends online and 71% know what streaming is but only 48% have ever tried it
  • Londoners and Bristolians are the biggest sharers of music online but only 39% and 46% respectively have ever streamed music. 
  • The majority of music buyers (78%) would buy the same or more music if they could listen to streamed music too, showing that the We7 model compliments the industry rather than cannibalises it

All this reinforces the ISP industry’s position that what we need is more legal ways for consumers to easily access music online.  7  million consumers can’t be criminals.  We7 is doing a great job pioneering this so thanks goes to Steve Purdham, and his team. 

Tonight I’m going to go home and listen to some free and legal music streaming online. Frank Sinatra methinks.

Categories
Business internet piracy

Virgin agrees anti-piracy music deal

Virgin has announced a deal with record label Universal that will provide unlimited access to the company’s music catalogue for a fixed monthly fee.  The level of this fee is as yet unnanounced but is reckoned to be the equivalent to the cost of two albums. The service will be available by Christmas 09.

The biggest aspect of this news is that Virgin has also undertaken to attempt to tackle the problem of online music piracy with the ulitmate disconnection a potential penalty for persistent offenders.  This appears to be a big step forward and is likely timed in advance of the Digital Britain report, delayed now until later this week.

This deal is likely to bring pressure to bear on other large consumer ISPs.  It does remain to be seen how the removal of broadband service from persistent pirates (to put it poetically) is handled.  This has been the one aspect of the debate that has had ISPs up in arms. They don’t want to be seen to be doing the police’s job.

The Virgin paid for model is of course different to the We7 advertising funded service discussed last week. The whole area is of a great deal of interest to many people.  My We7 posts get more hits than any other published item on this blog.  Helped no doubt by the fact that I have been giving away free We7 promotional codes :-).

If you want one let me know. I got a fresh batch in recently.

Categories
Business internet media

We7 cracks free online music streaming business model

I have been getting more and more hits on an old post about We7 where I was giving away promo codes for free music downloads.

In a dialogue on this subject with We7 CTO Gareth Reakes I was extremely impressed to find that they seem to be on the way to cracking the business model for giving away “free” music online.

The whole music streaming business model has been a debating point with the content industry for the last 12 months or so as ISPs and the Music Industry struggled to find a viable, mutually beneficial approach.

Several big name sites have got into difficulty over the model. YouTube have allegedly lost hundreds of millions of dollars (apparently 89% of YouTube traffic is(was) music) and imeem.com allegedly in debt to the record labels for tens of millions.

It is easy to attract visitors to your website if you are giving something away free but not so easy to make money.

What We7 has done is to fine tune the model so that the revenues balance out the costs.

Reakes said “We are trying to grow at while increasing ad revenues as we go and ensuring the model can work. What it comes down to is the number of ad impressions you get per stream you serve (this includes ads as they surf around the site looking for new content). With us that ration is between 3 and 4.

What this means is that you can get to a reasonable CPM rate (cost per thousand impressions – its how ads are priced) which is as low as £2.50. This really is an achievable rate. That’s not even factoring in the recent MCPS/PRS reduction in rate from 0.22p to 0.085p which reduces our costs per stream by over 10%.”

The key here is that We7 can get as many as 4 ads in your face/ear whilst you are listening to a track. This adds up to the equivalent of a CMP rate of £10 whilst the advertiser is on average only charged £2.50. Compare this with up to £60 at the FT and £25 at the Register. Not the same target audience I know but it does give you a feel for the attractiveness of the rates.

The reduction in the MCPS rate has also been a big help although this together with payments to the record labels still amounts to around 1 pence per stream.

We7 has been growing at a very attractive rate.  Reakes again:

“We will reach a couple of good milestones soon (we are nearly at million monthly unique visitors). I suppose one of the most interesting things from my point of view is that we are starting to get great reach with our widgets. We now have partnerships with The Guardian and NME where they show the widgets. They are also picked up in many many other places. The whole distribution of music and being able to listen to it anywhere is very interesting. We have had .75 million unique visitors to the widget on all its sites in the last 30 days! (that excludes anything on our site).”

This is a great story and the team at We7 is to be congratulated on their progress. I didn’t ask them whether they have reached profitability yet but this suggests that it can only be a matter of time.

I have had quite a few unanswered requests for We7 promo codes recently. Hold on tight guys and I’ll send some more out this week. Also We7 have said that if I want more to just ask so keep the requests coming. This batch is for ad free music.

Categories
End User internet

We7 Promotional Codes

Seeing as I was so nice to them last week We7 CTO Gareth Reakes has sent me some money off promotional codes to give out to readers.

If you want one – worth £2.50, just drop me a line at my timico email address. I’ve got ten of them – first come first served.

Categories
End User internet

We7 – Free & legal music downloads

I have mentioned We7.com before when I met CEO Steve Purdham at the Internet Conference and the subject of illegal music downloading via P2P is becoming almost a regular feature. In a rare moment of relaxation (really) I thought I’d revisit the We7 website which I had registered with for research purposes prior to the conference .

I’ve got to say that having sifted through the site it is brilliant. It gives you the choice of listening to a huge store of music free of charge and also the option to buy. You can put together a playlist which can then be shared with friends via email, bookmark or Bebo.

I put a Frank Sinatra playlist together. My favourite Frank tracks are all on vinyl so this is great. I do have to listen to a short ad in between tracks. I’m talking probably only a second long, almost subliminal, which so far I haven’t found to be a problem. I’m listening to it as I write this post.

This type of website is leading the charge of the music industry towards new business models that encourage people not to download illegally. I don’t know how much exposure the site gets. I would think if they created some kind of Facebook interface their usage would rise exponentially. Whether this is feasible I know not. 

I’m adding We7 to my blogroll.

Categories
End User internet

We7 – Free & legal music downloads

I have mentioned We7.com before when I met CEO Steve Purdham at the Internet Conference and the subject of illegal music downloading via P2P is becoming almost a regular feature. In a rare moment of relaxation (really) I thought I’d revisit the We7 website which I had registered with for research purposes prior to the conference .

I’ve got to say that having sifted through the site it is brilliant. It gives you the choice of listening to a huge store of music free of charge and also the option to buy. You can put together a playlist which can then be shared with friends via email, bookmark or Bebo.

I put a Frank Sinatra playlist together. My favourite Frank tracks are all on vinyl so this is great. I do have to listen to a short ad in between tracks. I’m talking probably only a second long, almost subliminal, which so far I haven’t found to be a problem. I’m listening to it as I write this post.

This type of website is leading the charge of the music industry towards new business models that encourage people not to download illegally. I don’t know how much exposure the site gets. I would think if they created some kind of Facebook interface their usage would rise exponentially. Whether this is feasible I know not. 

I’m adding We7 to my blogroll.

Categories
Business internet ofcom

ISPA Conference

Another busy week in prospect starting on Monday with the ISPA conference in the City of London. This is an annual event where the industry gets together to debate “commercial and regulatory issues of today and tomorrow”.

I’m on at 14.00 on a panel that discusses how ISPs can work in harmony with content providers. Other panelists are Feargal Sharkey of UK Music, Jeremy Olivier of Ofcom and Steve Purdham of We7, a music download business that was co-founded by Peter Gabriel.

This is a pretty hot topic at the moment, not only because of how piracy is hurting the music industry but also because of the pressure that legal download sources such as BBC iPlayer is placing on both ISP networks and margins.