[baddox]

I think the best example is Steam. A common sentiment online is "I don't pirate games any more because Steam makes it so easy to buy them, plus there are often incredible sales." I share this sentiment.

A large part of Steam's success is that they built a better product than the one offered by piracy. That's worth paying for.

Granted, this isn't a cure-all. I'm sure some people still pirate games, and it's probably impossible to estimate how many represent "lost sales." Moreover, games are one of the trickier things to pirate, often requiring some technical knowledge (using disk images, keygens, cracks, etc.). Music is obviously much easier to pirate.

[Insanity]

I completely agree. Steam was the reason I stopped pirating. For music, spotify did the trick :-)

[anigbrowl]

How are artists doing under Spotify? Oh wait, that's not your problem.

[ionised]

You're right, it's not his problem.

[Insanity]

Are they doing better when people are pirating? The bands that I like, I buy the album from anyway just to support them. But for music that I listen to every now and then - they would not get me to buy their album. So they actually would either make no money from me, or a bit through spotify.

[baddox]

How are artists doing with traditional album sales (digital or physical)? As far as I can tell, music sales have basically always been A) you're a huge artist and make lots of money or B) you're not huge and you can only make money touring.