Wow, so in the UK, Manchester is the home of the most downloaded pirated music. This report makes interesting reading. I guess it is still a sorry state affairs that this is seen as the norm now, but there has been a generational switch and the norm now is that content is free. The arguments have been done to death since the Napster days, about the pros and cons of downloads, wether it is theft or a form of promotion. I know which camp I reside in! Having said that, a simple solution to me is this.....It is very similar in operation to how the PRS works, collects money and distributes it to artists. This model could be applied to music download channels too, I should add this is similar to what Spotify do with ad revenue, but as well as getting advertising money shared out, end users could also contribute...how you ask? Basically, you add a levy to their communication bills (be it mobile, broadband, cable etc). This could be say at an extreme level between £5-£10 per month, or as low as £2 per month. Looking at stats from Ofcom for 2011, we see that there are

Number of mobile subscriptions in the UK 81.6m (Q4 2011)
Number of fixed residential broadband connections in the UK 18.8m (End 2011)

This is roughly 100m 'bills' which are being paid. So the inclusion of a £2 levy for example would generate roughly £200m for the music industry. This money, could then be distributed via the same system that the PRS currently use (based on what would be legal information on downloaded material). If the levy is low enough, the majority of people would not really notice the increase, and it would generate > £200m for musicians which is currently being lost to music downloads.Just a thought….comments below….PeaceNeil