Telling it straight ... Singer Bette Midler has blasted online music services such as Spotify and Pandora saying 'they have made it impossible for songwriters to earn a living'. Credit:Reuters Music piracy is trending down in Australia, both in terms of volume and population

Between December 2012 and 2013, overall music piracy volume fell by over 20 per cent

Casual pirates are being converted to legal services, but hard-core pirates remain

Demand for both TV and film on BitTorrent is four times that of music In a Q&A statement on the study, Spotfy said there were a number of important "caveats" in its research results. One of those included the "limited historical evidence" available to MusicMetric in conducting the study as MusicMetric is a new company. Another was not having the ability to track every online service through which piracy is conducted. "But it's still a massive step forward from using surveys that sample small pool sizes to determine unlawful behaviour," the Q&A states. Will Page, Spotify's director of economics, said it was "exciting" to see that legal streaming services like Spotify were "making inroads into reducing the music piracy problem".

"It shows the scope for superior legal services (offered at an accessible price point) to help improve the climate for copyright online," he said. Radio Head frontman Thom Yorke has described the state of the music industry as 'the last desperate fart of a dying corpse'. Credit:Edwina Pickles Spotify and other services such as Pandora continue to face heavy criticism from artists though, who say it doesn't give them a fair share of money. A tweet launched by songstress Bette Midler earlier this year captured the sense of frustration that many in the industry are now feeling.

Her sentiments have been echoed by the likes of David Byrne, Aerosmith's Steven Tyler, hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan and Radiohead's Thom Yorke who colourfully described the state of the music business as akin to "the last desperate fart of a dying corpse". And it's not just the big names. Mathematician turned indie musician David Lowery posted copies of his royalty payments online last year under the headline: "My Song Got Played On Pandora 1 Million Times and All I Got Was $16.89, Less Than What I Make From a Single T-Shirt Sale!" The US National Music Publishers' Association has also chimed in. Last month it described a court decision which handed partial victory to Pandora in the royalties stoush as "a slap in the face" to musicians and publishers. The co-chief executive officer of film production and distribution company Village Roadshow, Graham Burke, recently told Fairfax Media that despite what the music industry had done to try and curb piracy, it was still a problem. Mr Burke added that the film industry adopting a Spotify-like service for movies, as suggested by Turnbull, would not fix the piracy problem as it had not fully curbed piracy in the music industry.

"There were 2.5 million [Australian music] downloads off Pirate Bay in June alone," he said. "People still opt to steal so [a Spotify-like service for movies] is not a solution." To create a Spotify for movies also wouldn't work because of the greater cost of creating films compared with music, he said. "To say that movies should go out at the same time on Spotify-style price ignores the fact that music is recorded somewhere from $30,000 to $300,000. Feature films cost anywhere from $5 million to $250 million," Mr Burke said. Despite the Spotify results, Spotify's Page said that Australia still faced a "massive challenge" in curbing the piracy of content online. Spotify's Australian managing director, Kate Vale, said the results showed Spotify has had a "positive impact on reducing piracy and stimulated music revenue growth" in markets that were ravaged by piracy.

"If these are the local trends we're seeing after just two years in [the Australian] market, we're excited about the impact Spotify can have on piracy and the Australian music industry in the future," she said. The Abbott government is currently looking at ways to crack down on online copyright infringement. One proposal outlined in its discussion paper on the issue would compel internet providers to stop subscribers who illicitly download. Another would require them to block overseas websites that host copyright infringing content. The content industry has welcomed the paper's ideas, while some internet providers such as iiNet have rejected them, saying the issue of piracy is primarily a pricing and availability issue. Telstra recently said it supported the crackdown.

But consumer group Choice has said the proposal amounts to the introduction of an industry-run internet filter and could result in the blocking of legitimate sites. With Stephen Hutcheon