Illegal File Sharing in the UK Broadband Declines

A survey carried out by Music Ally, involving a thousand of its music fans, has brought to light the fact that the percentage of people who downloaded music from unlawful file sharing sources on a regular basis, has declined to 17 percent in January 2009, from 22 percent in December 2007. Music Ally is a digital music business strategy and information company, based in the United Kingdom.

However, a fact of great concern revealed by the survey was the increase in the number of fresh downloaders among the music fans. The total illegal music downloaders’ percentage has rose to 31 percent in January 2009 from 28 percent in December 2007. This must be weighed against another result that the practice of sharing albums regularly by bluetoothing tracks and using burned CDs amongst fans are also on the rise.

The study also revealed that there were more music fans in the country at present who regularly bought single track downloads than sharing the single track files. Nevertheless, the percentage of the regularly album sharing music fans remained higher than the digital album purchasers. The research also shows that many teens were streaming music on a regular basis – thanks to fast broadband -, which in its turn reveals an apparent move to streaming through Spotify, YouTube, etc.

Experts are waiting to see what transpires after the proposals of the Digital Britain report are introduced in 2010. The report has proposed that the ISPs should be acting againat piracy by assuming certain measures such as issuing warning as a primary step and assuming technical measures against those failing the first (reduction of broadband speeds etc).