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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

There's this bizarro idea you get from a lot of people that torrents are not any threat to artists, because those people dowloading from torrents wouldn't have bought the record anyway. Not to mention it brings them "new fans" who discovered the record on the torrent.

In real life, of my 30+ friends, few and very rarely bother to buy anything from the artists the like anymore, they just torrent it. And they almost never see them in concert either -- since most rarely visit my country.

So a band that used to sell 100.000 and 300.000 records here (say U2), now sells around 10.000-20.000 or so (on a lucky day).

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While I think some of the evidence in support of torrenting is more than a little suspicious, I do question whether or not heavily fighting it can provide value.

That is, I don't know how many folks that torrent stuff do buy stuff. Anecdotally, I actually just don't know that many folks that torrent. Of the few I suspect do torrent, they wouldn't be buying anything anyway. At worst, they would have been fine with crappy taped copies from the radio. Or music videos on VHS. (Heck, as a kid I probably watched more VHS stuff than anything else, and we bought videos.)

So, my hypothesis is that the amount of money and effort that is extracted from and goes into fighting music torrenting eclipses any supposed money that was lost in the crime.

I'm definitely game for any links. Or ideas on how to explore this hypothesis.

> So, my hypothesis is that the amount of money and effort that is extracted from and goes into fighting music torrenting eclipses any supposed money that was lost in the crime.

I think that part if it is to create a legal environment that is hostile to making torrenting more mainstream than it currently is.

Apologies, but I'm not sure I follow your sentence. :(

Suing torrenters / torrent sites makes the legal environment around torrents hostile. It increases the risk that you are taking in trying to 'mainstream' torrents in a way that everyone would fire up a torrent client to download pirated music / movies / etc.

Among my friends, Spotify completely ended music piracy. Spotify is way more handy than finding torrents, downloading them, copying the MP3s to your phone, etc. I'm from Scandinavia though where Spotify started. TV and Movie piracy however is still widespread since there's no good way to watch that stuff easily and cheaply (Netflix has recently started in Sweden but the catalog is still very weak).

Somebody is seeing U2 in concert, they are making hundreds of millions per tour. Merch licensing is also huge income now compared to 20 years ago.

Music producers are also getting paid, Andy Samberg used to buy his SNL shorts music and Lonely Island beats from producers on twitter selling and leasing their songs directly.

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