It’s a story about the music industry but the implications for the book business are obvious. Eric Pfanner in the New York Times reports that most of those who copy music from pirate and file-sharing websites would not do so if there were a legal and convenient way to buy it.

“Over the past year,” Pfanner writes, “as sales of CDs have continued to fall and paid-for downloads from services like Apple’s iTunes have fallen short of hopes, record companies have moved to embrace casual file-sharers. Legal services offering free, unlimited streaming of music, rather than downloads, are proliferating. According to a survey published last week, they are taking some of the wind out of the pirates’ sails.

‘Consumers are doing exactly what we said they would do,’ said Steve Purdham, chief executive of We7, a service that says it has attracted two million users in Britain in a little more than half a year by offering unlimited access to millions of songs. ‘They weren’t saying, “Give me pirated music”; they were saying, “Give me the music I want.”‘

The result is a sharp decline in the number of teenagers who downloaded unauthorized streamed music, according to a British poll. Pfanner’s conclusion? “Rather than cannibalizing existing digital businesses, they say, the new services are often attracting people who previously shared files illegally.”

The key to profitability of the service is either a cheap subscription, advertising revenue, or a combination of both. We’ll be watching these services closely to see if they make money or if, instead, human nature reverts to the something-for-nothing mentality that has driven so many well-meaning people into the arms of pirates.

Read Music Industry Lures ‘Casual’ Pirates to Legal Sites and see what you think.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.