Study - Consumption of paperless cultural objects and services

Initialement publié le 16 October 2015 on the website : www.hadopi.fr

Uses

Translations are provided as a service to Arcom users and are supplied “as is”, throught the DeepL tool. Consequently, only the text of the original version is authentic. Please note that not all the files have been translated.

Find out more about translation

For the second time, as part of its legal observation mission, Hadopi has carried out a study of the consumption of cultural objects and services that go paperless, in the form of "consumption logs". More generally, it enables us to qualify the nature of this consumption, according to the uses and media used.

Methodology and reading keys

The methodology used is that of a consumer diary, i.e. an online questionnaire to be filled in daily, for 7 consecutive days; each participant is asked to record his or her daily consumption of music, films, series, video games and go paperless books/BDs. 12,256 Internet users aged 15 and over were surveyed during the recruitment phase. At the end of the 7 consecutive days of the survey, 5,985 people had correctly completed all the consumer diaries. They are representative of consumers of cultural objects.

Among the key points outlined in the study's presentation note are the declarative nature of the study and the occasional errors of assessment this may generate, the process used to characterize the lawfulness of uses, and the margins of uncertainty linked to the size of the sample.

Download the full report // Download the executive summary

Access modes: streaming and free access

Streaming is the preferred mode of access, mainly for music (32 songs listened to on average over the week studied) and TV series (4.4 episodes on average). With all the necessary precautions to be taken for this kind of study, where seasonality is an important factor that can strongly influence the results, it's interesting to note that downloading seems to be falling in terms of the number of people choosing this mode of access compared to 2013. Whatever the type of work consumed, free access, covering both legal and unlawful solutions, is in the majority.

Two-thirds of respondents do not buy go paperless works individually. Nearly one consumer in two claims to have a subscription, but only a third pays for it. Free" subscriptions cover a heterogeneous reality, and reveal a certain confusion on the part of respondents: they include Spotify and Deezer, for example, but also YouTube or Facebook, where the presence of a user account is sometimes considered a "free contract". A third of those who have never paid, however, say they are ready to do so.

YouTube is the leading platform for accessing music, whether traditionally by streaming or by downloading, which corresponds to the practice of "stream ripping", i.e. copying the content of a streamed work. It is also the first declared access platform for streaming movies. It is also the leading platform for downloading films, in similar proportions to Itunes, and for streaming series, in similar proportions to M6 and Canal +.

Sector trends: strong disparities according to the cultural goods concerned

Music remains the most widely consumed type of paperless cultural object (in terms of both penetration rate and volume), with a very high level of legal access; YouTube, Deezer, iTunes and Spotify are clearly the preferred access media.

Streaming of films and TV series is mostly legal, and is marked by the use of catch-up TV (mainly for TV series) and VOD supplies (for films, in addition to catch-up TV). Downloading, on the other hand, remains largely unlawful, mainly from specialized direct download sites.

For music and films, a third of the works cited are French, which is only the case for a minority of series consumed (17% streaming, 3% downloading).

For books and comics (2 to 3 works per consumer per week, depending on access mode), unlawful use is roughly equivalent to legal use, although this is clearly marked by platforms offering their own e-readers, such as Amazon and its Kindle or Fnac and the Kobo. iTunes is also very often cited, probably thanks to reading on smartphones and tablets. French works are over-represented among books consumed (40 to 46%).

Finally, video games enjoy a high level of legal consumption, driven by a few key players. For mobile games, they are downloaded either via the medium's OS (Apple store/iTunes and Google Play in the lead), or via the key players in PC gaming: publishers such as EA with Origin and the flagship Steam platform.

Reading precautions

While this study echoes the one carried out in 2013, the results should be compared with caution, as they can be strongly impacted by the context (cultural events, blockbuster releases, etc.) in which the period studied falls.

It also became apparent when reading the results that some respondents had included in "free contract" the fact of having a free account on a platform (e.g.: user account on YouTube or Dailymotion). The results corresponding to "free subscriptions" therefore include ownership of a non-paying user account. Some platforms may fall into more than one category, for example :

platforms that offer either a free supply or a paid supply can be found in both categories, depending on the respondent's type of consumption.
Platforms for which the creation of a user account is optional may fall into the "with contract" or "without contract" category, depending on the respondent's personal situation.