Music Copying Rampant in Britain
By Mark Fleischmann April 14, 2008 — Copying, not downloading, is the real key to declining music-industry revenues, according to a survey of British young people commissioned by British Music Rights.

BMR is a lobbying organization representing composers, songwriters, and music publishers. On its behalf, the University of Hertfordshire surveyed 1158 people in the 18-24 year old age bracket. The survey found 95 percent had engaged in some form of copying. Two-thirds copied at least five CDs per month, borrowing the discs from friends. Fifty-eight percent copied music from a friend's hard drive. Other forms of copying included such low-tech methods as recording off radio.

Almost half of the music in an average MP3 collection had not been paid for. Those who participated in the survey carried an average of £750 of uncompensated intellectual property in their music players. That would be about $1500 at current exchange rates.

Said Feargal Sharkey, chief executive of BMR and former lead singer with the Undertones: "For somebody who has spent 30 years in the music industry, you instinctively know this stuff is going on. But when you actually sit looking at your computer and see a number that says 95 percent of people are copying music at home, you suddenly go, 'Bloody hell'.... Ultimately it has to get better.... At some point musicians and songwriters have to make enough money out of it, otherwise they stop doing it."

Sharkey is asking the British government to consider a law similar to the EU law that allows some copying in tandem with compensation to composers and performers. The U.K. Intellectual Property Office, at the behest of the country's music-industry trade associations, is mulling what some are calling an iPod tax. It would require consumers to pay an up-front fee when buying a music player but would also sanction some amount of copying.

Having made many pilgrimages to London record stores, let me add another possible reason for rampant copying: sky-high British CD prices. They were exorbitant even before the dollar began its recent slide against the pound.