Consumer-Trust Study Proves What Everyone Already Knows About Music Industry

We somehow missed this yesterday, but Variety has a report on a recent study that demonstrates just how strongly young music listeners overseas feel about the music industry (and in case you were wondering, they don’t feel strongly about it in a good way):

An Edelman survey claims that more than a quarter of 18- to 34-year-olds in the U.K. and France would download film and music content illegally due to a lack of trust in the entertainment industry.

While technology companies rated highest in Edelman’s report on levels of consumer trust among opinion elites, defined as educated, affluent and media informed, in France and the U.K., media and entertainment companies ranked behind only insurance companies in terms of the public’s distrust. That distrust helps fuel piracy, argues the report.

Some 41% of 18- to 34-year-olds in the U.K. did not trust entertainment companies to provide them with value for money, compared with an even higher figure of 54% in France. In the U.K., 35% of those asked did not think entertainment companies respected the rights of people who pay for digital entertainment, with that figure rising to 46% in France.

“It’s bad news for the entertainment companies in that consumers are saying they’re used to getting what they want, when they want, without paying for it on the Internet,” said Gail Becker, Edelman’s global head of digital entertainment division. “People are asking if I am going to pay for my entertainment, what value are you going to give us?”

We’ve never quite fully understood the “you’re an evil company, so therefore we’re just gonna take it all without paying” reasoning; if that were the way the world worked, both OPEC and the G.O.P. would be out of business. But we can at least understand what fuels that distrust in the first place, especially in the U.K., where CDs usually cost about 2.2 million shillings (or whatever currency they use), and they still allow Stereophonics to release albums without prosecution.

Distrust fuels piracy [Variety]