14 DAY TRIAL // According to a new report, music piracy started to decline within Sweden due to the huge popularity of Spotify and the convenient plans it provides, thus rendering piracy useless.
Music streaming is viewed as a win-win solution for everyone, since end-users get easy and affordable access to songs while artists retain full rights and monetary benefits of their albums.
Therefore, as long as everybody gets what they want, piracy is no longer needed and streaming platforms flourish.
However, this has only been proven to be true in Sweden, home of the much mediated Spotify, where more than a quarter of all users declared they preferred legal music over the pirated one due to this service.
As reported by TorrentFreak, a recent report published by the Swedish Music Industry questioned thousands of people aged between 17 and 54.
The study shows that, since 2009, the number of users who relied on file sharing sites to download their music has declined by 25 percent, while 9 percent decreased during 2011 alone.
An interesting fact revealed by this report is that within three months after Spotify was launched in Sweden, there were more registered users than pirating ones.
The main reason why Spotify, or any other streaming service for that matter, is able to fight piracy so efficiently is that it offers users a legal alternative to getting equally high-quality tunes (at greater speeds, too).
Those who chose to give up sharing sites after creating an account, be it paid or free, on a dedicated streaming service were attracted by the great variety and amount of tracks.
Even if this study refers exclusively to Sweden, it can be extrapolated to other countries as well, due to the numerous services that stream music at affordable prices.
Another benefit of these platforms is that, just like torrent sites, they also provide free versions, so, even without creating a subscription, users can still enjoy their functionalities, if they do not mind the ads on the side.
On the other hand, Spotify is currently under heavy fire because of its collaboration with Facebook, which, although attracted numerous new members, also alienated a great deal of them - it remains to be seen if it manages to fix all reported issues and get them back.