Stream-Ripping Massively Increasing Music Piracy

Everyone enjoys listening to music. I must confess, as I write this I’m listening to some John Denver… don’t you judge me! It would appear however that music piracy is on the increase due to ‘stream-ripping’ from popular online music sites. This could potentially mean that the services will have to change.

Stream-Ripping – Piracy in another form

You wouldn’t steal a purse! You Wouldn’t steal an etc. etc. Piracy is a long, ongoing battle. Laws and internet providers are doing what they can to stop it, but at the end the day, there is only so much. We reported recently how the law was changes meaning that those who undertake in piracy (specifically in that instances through Kodi repositories) could go to jail for 10 years.

So what is stream-ripping? It’s basically the modern equivilent of having a cassette tape recording the top 40 on the radio or using a VHS to record a movie on the TV. It’s not legal, but it’s difficult to effectively police. People have basically been using 3rd party products to record streamed music from popular apps reports the BBC. This would give the person doing it, a permanent copy of the song.

A (poor) example of an online pirate.

It isn’t even necessarily just music streaming apps. Not that I want to encourage it, but most people with a bit of online savvy know it’s possible to download YouTube videos. Therefore any one posting a song or even album on YouTube, can be easily downloaded as an MP3.

How can they stop Stream-Ripping?

I’m not sure they can, but they’re clearly worried. The research reports that site traffic to these stream-ripping websites has increased by 141.3%. In the UK alone, the websites were visited nearly  500,000 times. This is nearly 3 times as much as some considerable torrenting sites. It therefore seems that music piracy might be moving away from torrenting and into ‘live’ recording. A remarkable reversal when you think about it.

In their research these are some of the most common reasons given for participating in this behavior:

• I already own it on CD. I just wanted a digital copy. (31%)
• I wanted to listen to it without being online. (26%)
• I wanted to listen to it while out. (25%)
• I’m too poor to buy music. (21%)
• Music is overpriced. (20%)

Before you criticise the maths, people were allowed to choose more than one answer.

The maths I would suggest from that research is that 95% of the answers were lies. The reason the vast majority of people pirate is because they don’t want to pay! If I gave you the option of eating 2 cakes, 1 of which is free, the other costs £1, it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out which you’d pick. I don’t have a solution to online piracy, but if this is what people believe, then those who engage in it might be able to enjoy it for a little while longer yet. It’s clear that they don’t under it in the slightest.

Taking a break from my John Denver, I’m off to enjoy some pirate music now.