The European Union Intellectual Property Office building in Alicante, Spain. Photo Credit: Kristof Roomp
Amid continued streaming growth and actions targeting illegal platforms, music piracy appears to be flattening, according to a new report out of the European Union.
The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) just recently published that multifaceted breakdown, which spans north of 100 pages and charts unapproved media consumption across music, film, television, and more.
Pertaining specifically to the European Union as of 2023, the analysis is EUIPO’s fourth such report since 2019. And to reiterate the obvious, the reach of on-demand music streaming (including but not limited to Spotify) has expanded dramatically in the interim.
At the intersection of this point, ongoing efforts to decommission stream-rippers, and the well-documented buildout of non-music streaming players, overall piracy in the EU stabilized at an average of “about 10.2 accesses per internet user per month” in 2023, according to EUIPO.
The figure has been roughly flat since 2021 – though both TV and music piracy increased slightly between 2022 and 2023 in the EU, the report shows.
Nevertheless, music accounted for a small portion (a monthly average of 0.6 accesses per internet user) of European Union piracy last year, according to EUIPO. In 2023, music’s average piracy rate was about one-quarter of its level in 2017, EUIPO relayed.
Unsurprisingly, the mentioned stream-rippers, which enable users to download videos’ audio, are said to have remained the most popular music piracy method in 2023, making up nearly half of the EU’s illegal consumption.
But the piracy method’s share (by content consumption) was particularly large in Denmark (63%), Hungary (67%), and Greece and Slovenia (68%), to name some. In Ireland, on the other hand, a combined 67% of 2023 music piracy derived from streaming (25%) and downloading (42%), EUIPO specified.
Straight downloading was the second-most-prevalent music piracy method in the EU during 2023, followed by streaming and, with a decidedly small share, torrenting, EUIPO indicated. And all told, a clear-cut majority of the EU’s music piracy occurred on mobile devices as opposed to desktops last year.
Piracy has presumably kept on leveling off in the EU during the current year, and especially in light of ongoing market factors, it’ll be interesting to monitor illegal consumption trends moving forward.
To put it mildly, proper artists’ per-stream compensation remains less than ideal. But legal on-demand listening has certainly helped curb piracy, and it isn’t hard to argue that illegal music access simply isn’t worth the trouble.
New subscribers in the States and a number of European nations can currently receive three months of Spotify Premium for free, for instance, and even in several EU nations, Individual costs substantially less than €10.99 monthly.
