The Effect of Streaming Services on Music Piracy, Poster 6

The pervasiveness of the Internet and creation of the mp3 audio file have changed how listeners consume music, giving rise to peer-to-peer file sharing networks, purchasing platforms, and streaming services. This study seeks... [ view full abstract ]

The pervasiveness of the Internet and creation of the mp3 audio file have changed how listeners consume music, giving rise to peer-to-peer file sharing networks, purchasing platforms, and streaming services. This study seeks to determine which features of streaming services draw potential music pirates away from illegal modes of consumption. The results of a laboratory experiment conducted on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk demonstrate that the presence of a streaming service in a music distribution market significantly reduces the probability that a consumer pirates music, and convenient access to familiar music appears to be the primary feature of streaming services that entices people to move away from piracy.