Forty percent of people don't know you can listen to music legally online

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Have you heard of Spotify? Last.fm? It seems lots of people haven’t. Research by Consumer Focus announced that four in ten people can’t name a single legal online music service.

Of the music fans that were aware of such services, 85% could only name Amazon and iTunes. Doing the maths, that means that only a measly 9% of people are aware of the 20-odd sites such as Spotify, last.fm and We7 where you can legally listen to music.

And whose fault is that? Perhaps digital music music companies should take some of the rap for failing to educate people about legal music sites. This is a missed opportunity for the labels to make money from the legal sites, it’s also encourages piracy as people try to listen to stuff illegally instead.

“Illegal services threaten the music industry by side-stepping the artists and ultimately taking revenues from the development of new music. When combined with the risks of malware and virus attacks and a clear lack of awareness into the alternatives to the consumer, what more can be done to stamp out piracy and help the industry, consumer and artist alike, to share music and listen without compromise?” a We7 statement read.

Anna Leach

3 comments

  • mm, fair point there is often a country block on these sites isn’t there. interested to know you can get last.fm in India.

  • Well, there’s also the fact that a lot of these sites (case in point, Pandora) are only available to ISPs in specific 1st-world countries. In which internet can also be uber slow at loading internet music sites.

    But Last.fm, thank heavens, is free everywhere (read India). It’s just not as well known yet outside the UK/USA.

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