How Music Piracy Has Gone Mobile
Yep. The big problem now are music thieves with their mobile phones. From Re/Code:
The music industry faces a new front in its long-running battle against piracy: The smartphone.Mobile applications have eclipsed file-sharing services, online storage sites known as “digital lockers” and stream-ripping software as the most widely used source of free music downloads, according to a new study from researcher NPD Group, whose results have not previously been made public.Some 27 million people in the U.S. have used mobile applications to get at least one song in the past year, much of it believed to be unauthorized, NPD found in research that seeks for the first time to quantify the phenomenon. That’s more than the 21 million people NPD estimates use peer-to-peer sites such as isoHunt to download music.
“In the beginning, we had feature phones with ringtones and very slow networks,” said NPD industry analyst Russ Crupnick. “As the technology improves, it becomes a free for all for someone who wants free music files.”
This is such crap. Why would you take the time to download the software, record a stream of music, edit it and then post it somewhere for somoen to download it? It’s faster just to stream it. Another red herring by the music industry to take focus off of their years of mis management and swindling the artists.