Spotify people must feel uneasy after all! After Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich pointed their angry fingers on the popular streaming service last week, accusing them to steal from artists, they are now trying to turn the attention on other organizations: music festivals!
According to a new research released by Spotify a few days ago, music piracy seems to increase considerably after a music festival whereas streaming and digital sales remain the same. The research suggests that festival-goers are more inclined to steal music than buy or legally stream it after having discovered new artists at festivals. Their report, entitled ‘Adventures in The Netherlands’, was based on the 2012 music festival Stoppelhaene, and shows that Bit Torrent downloads for the artists Racoon and Gers Pardoel totally increased after the festival and their sales and streaming counts didn’t change.
Here are a few declarations from Spotify:
‘What is surprising is that our analysis uncovered some examples of torrents spiking immediately after festival performances’… ‘Explanations for these spikes merits further study, but one intuitive driver is instant gratification. Academics and policy makers who are researching this topic may want to consider other events such as awards and talent shows to see if similar spikes occur.’
I can tell you that the findings of this research would not have passed the test for a serious scientific paper. They just consider a few factors – Spotify streams, festivals, digital sales… – and they draw conclusions whereas it is very difficult to know which factor influence another one! Plus their study is based on one unique festival in the Netherlands, and they dare to generalize! At least they could have checked the data for a few festivals, otherwise I don’t buy their statistics.
Plus Spotify has been very successful in the Netherlands for quite a while, and Netherlanders’ behavior may be different from the behavior of people living in the US where Spotify has been implanted more recently. So, in a country so familiar with the service, I find it strange that streaming counts for these artists don’t increase even a little around the festival whereas Bit Torrent downloads skyrocket!
And again they draw conclusions based on 2 artists,… were they the only ones at this festival? I guess not! I want data like these for all the artists who performed at Coachella 2012 or 2013, and we will know what we are talking about.
Another part of their study shows that artists, who delay the release of their album on Spotify, get more pirated. To illustrate this they analyzed the data for One Direction’s album ‘Take Me Home’ and Robbie Williams’ single ‘Candy’, which were both released on Spotify without any delay and sold four copies per BitTorrent download. On the other hand, Rihanna’s ‘Unapologetic’ and Taylor Swift’s ‘Red’, whose releases on Spotify were delayed, sold one copy per BitTorrent download. In other words, Spotify wants you to believe that Spotify boost the sales and no Spotify boosts piracy!
Again, the statistics are doubtful, I looked at their graphs and there are no scales on the y-axis, to respect confidentiality as they say,… since when sale numbers are confidential? But how can they compare the graphs? We have no idea of the numbers, and no matter how Rihanna and Taylor Swift’s sales/piracy ratios look on these graphs, sales may be huge and piracy doesn’t hurt the artists. Spotify seems to manipulate us.
And one last important thing: downloading music is totally legal in the Netherlands, which totally changes the whole equation, why people would not do it if it’s legal? How convenient that Spotify did its study in this country!
At the end, I am not sure what Spotify wants to prove… That we should ban music festivals? That’s ridiculous, since gigs and festivals are probably the main source of revenue for artists. This paper reminds me some ancient studies made by the tobacco industry trying to convince us that cigarettes don’t cause cancer! It’s bias! In any case, many artists don’t see the difference between streaming services and piracy, should I remind Spotify they pay them less than $0.005 per stream?