U.K. Music Piracy Falls, Streaming Rises

A new study reveals a drop in illegal filesharing in the UK, while music streaming is on the rise.

A new study from The Leading Question and Music Ally shows that illegal filesharing is falling in the UK. The survey of over 1000 people shows that between December 2007 and January this year, the numbers filesharing illegally fell by around 25%
Among those 14-18, the drop was quite noticeable, going from 42% who would share files once a month or more to 26%.

It would appear that streaming has become the replacement for filesharing. According to the report:

"The move to streaming — e.g. YouTube, MySpace and Spotify — is clear with the research showing that many teens (65%) are streaming music regularly (i.e. each month)," the researchers wrote. "Nearly twice as many 14-18s (31%) listen to streamed music on their computer every day compared to music fans overall (18%). More fans are regularly sharing burned CDs and bluetoothing tracks to each other than file-sharing tracks."