Piracy is defined as the copying and distributing of copies of a piece of music for which the composer, recording artist, or copyright-holding record company did not give consent. (Neuwirth, 2014) It is difficult to know exactly when and where the first instances of piracy occurred but there is evidence to show that composers as old as Beethoven where affected. “Both he (Beethoven) and his publisher had to contend with piracy by rival publishers who brought out editions of their own.” (Encyclopaedia.com, 2016) When the MP3 came out in the late 90’s it revolutionized the way music is consumed. It allowed files to be compressed down to one twelfth of it’s original size without being distorted. It is this format that gave birth to digital …show more content…
They offer listeners access to there favourite songs without the need to download and store files. These streaming services are also the biggest proponents of the streaming kills piracy narrative. In an interview Soundclouds CTO Eric Wahlforss stated “The new generation doesn’t pirate music, that problem is not something anyone talks about any more, even in the music industry”(Geiger, 2016) he believes that the ease of use of music streaming services such as Spotify and Deezer has lured consumers away from illegal downloads. There is research to support this and a European Commission study offered evidence that Spotify displaces piracy but it also kills paid downloads. (Aguiar and Waldfogel, 2015) As the platform for music consumption changes the mix of piracy methods is also diversifying. Stream Ripping (conversion of streamed content into downloadable files) has become a favourite new tool for pirates and saw a 50% increase in the U.S from 2013 to 2015. (Ribeiro, 2016) This suggests that streaming services are not killing piracy merely changing the players. This is not good news for artists and record company 's as Youtube is the no.1 music streaming platform and getting bigger. BPI reports that the first six months of 2015 saw an increase of 98.2% on the same period in 2014. (Ingham, 2016) Stream ripping sites like www.youtube-mp3.org have more than 60 million unique users a month. Ribeiro, 2016) According to data from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry 30% of internet users reported stream ripping in 2016 a 10% increase over last year. (Karp, 2016) As the processing power and capabilities of our modern day phones continues to grow so does the way we access music, both legally of illegally. According to data shared by Muso, a London based company that specializes in pirate audiences 28% of all visits to pirate websites came from mobile