The Times is reporting on an English study that found “the average digital music player carries 1,770 songs [with] 48 per cent of the collection copied illegally. The proportion of illegally downloaded tracks rises to 61 per cent among 14 to 17-year-olds.” (Link)

What the study does not mention is the usage of these tracks, and it should be considered. Downloading is free – despite of course being illegal – and a common behavior is to download many tunes one never listens to. Saying something like “the music industry is losing 48% of its revenues to downloads” would be a mistake. There is a grey zone here, for things you download but would never have bought. David Weinberger came up with freechasing to define a similar phenomena. You could call that “download and forget”.

An encouraging sign shows up discretely towards the end of the article, with the British Music Rights agency finally talking about positive measures, like “developing new legal services that make breaking copyright unappealing”. That is the only solution. Just like when Steve Jobs made legal download cool and convenient at Starbucks (only in the US and only in Starbucks unfortunately). People will start using legal services as soon as it’s cooler to be legit. What’s happening in France, with Orange working on providing downloads of more than a million songs to mobile phones and home computers for €12 a month might be a step in that direction, at least if the service does not contain loopholes like losing all your tracks if you close your account, etc…