I was listening to an R4 program the other day about illegal music downloads and was again surprised that nobody suggested my pet theory on why it is increasing despite the emergence of things like spotify etc.

I reckon that the increased "lead times" of modern music create a demand which can only be supplied by illegal downloads. For example: a song was being hyped on R1 (hard as that is to believe!)last week and continuing into this week even though the first chance to buy it will be late feb – people can either illegally download it or wait 6 weeks…

Not really sure why I posted this but it's something that really annoys me whenever I hear the music industry personnel moaning! I could be completely wrong but it's never even mentioned as a possible cause.

Isn't it more to do with perceived value ? We routinely watch movies and music on telly, funded by occasional adverts, roughly 5:1 content to ads, so a simple sum says a 3 minute track is worth 30 seconds of attention, so if you value your leisure time at £20 ph (generous) that's 16p per track…