Tracking Playstation Plus: October

Low and behold, I do believe I'm actually beginning to see some real value start to emerge out of the Playstation Plus scheme.  Whatever do I mean dear reader?  Well, read on....

This is the content that featured as part of October's Plus content:

• PSN: Street Fighter 2 HD Remix
• minis: Aero Racing; Yeti Sports
• PSOne Classic: Kula World; 
• Full Game Trial: Ferrari The Race Experience; Tomb Raider Underworld
• Exclusive Discounts: Burn Zombie Burn – 50% discount; Trine – 50% discount; Alien Breed: Impact – 20% discount; Gravity Crash – 50% discount; Ace Armstrong Vs. The Alien Scumbags – 20% – day 1 discount; Shatter soundtrack and Dynamic Theme – 50% discount
• Exclusive DLC: Fallout 3: Point Lookout; Fallout 3: Mothership Zeta; Fallout 3: Operation: Anchorage; Fallout 3: Broken Steel; Fallout 3: The Pitt
• Dynamic Themes: Exclusive Move ‘Start the Party’ theme; exclusive ‘Halloween’ theme
• Premium avatars: Pain: Jarvis and Le Toot Avatars; SingStar: Wannabe and Rising Star Avatars; Exclusive Plus Halloween avatars
• Burn Zombie Burn PlayStation Home item

In anticipation of the release of Fallout: New Vegas, the DLC for Fallout 3 was released. Sony also released a Killzone 3 theme, the first 5000 to be downloaded scored the lucky lot a slot on the beta of the game.  I was fortunate enough to be one of the first 5000 and have been playing Killzone 3 since the last week of October.  This is what I was (partially) referring to when I said I could see some value in the service, especially as the alpha build of the multiplayer is pretty darn good.

In addition, new subscribers get an extra 3 months worth of Plus for free - 15 months for the price of 12.  There was more value to be found in a subsequent announcement that the zombie-tinged DLC for Red Dead Redemption was going to be discounted for Plus customers.  Nice.

This is what October's spending looked like for me:

Hmmm.  Had I bought all the things I downloaded they would have cost £80.87!  However, I already owned much of what was given away in October.  After I remove these the October savings come in around £18.65.  I'm not convinved I would have paid for the minis or the PS1 game.  Last time I checked in the value of savings came in at £64.56.  After four months these savings now amount to £83.21.

The real value came in the discounted price for Trine and RDR's Undead Nightmare - a saving of £5.29 in total.  It's these kind of discounts I'd like to see more of in the future in order to say Plus is worth the money.  

Oh yeah, that and the Killzone 3 Beta ;-D

Tracking Playstation Plus: August and September

I kind of forgot to review the Playstation Plus proposition for August so I figured I'd bundle that month in with September. It's been a while... since I last updated this series of posts but in the last one I covered the content on offer for August.

Below you should be able to see a little table charting the content I grabbed and an overview of the estimated value for that month...



Back in September Sony released the following content for Plus subscribers:

• PSN: Sam and Max: Devil’s Playground (entire season)
• minis: Vector Tower Defense, Echoes
• PSOne Classic: Abe's Odysee
• Full Game Trial: Warhawk (Plus exclusive 50% discount for Plus members on purchase), Inferno Pool
• Exclusive Discounts: LittleBigPlanet Ico and Shadow of Colossus costume pack - 50%; Metal Gear Solid (PSOne) – 50%; Warhawk – 50%; Pixel Junk Shooter – 20%
• DLC Exclusive: UFC Undisputed 2010
• Dynamic Themes: Exclusive PlayStation Move theme; Exclusive ‘Fish Tank’ theme
• Premium avatars: Eye Pet Blue Goalie Avatar; Eye Pet DJ Avatar

On top of that there were a few additional add-ons.  New subscribers to the annual package were given the full game (digital download) of Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty to keep permanently.  Early access to the following demos were also given: God of War: Ghost of Sparta (PSP),
 PES 2011 and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow.  If that wasn't enough on the 27th of September Plus subscribers were also given exclusive beta access to the multiplayer version of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood - this was something worth having! Oh, and an exclusive Infamous 2 theme, although that wasn't much to shout about.  Below is the table of content I downloaded:




The total monthly savings for August (£20.34) and September (£29.45) had I paid for this would be £49.79.  If we include the £14.77 from the month of July then the running total quarter way through the year stands at £64.56.

It's very difficult to measure how much the exclusive content costs, especially as the beta for Assassin's Creed has been rumoured to go on a more general release for non-subscribers at a later date, but it certainly did sweeten the deal.  It's also not the last beta to be announced - read on.

October's content


The following material has been announced by Sony for October:

• PSN: Street Fighter 2 HD Remix
• minis: Aero Racer, Yeti Sports
• PSOne Classic: Syphon Filter
• Full Game Trial: Ferrari The Race Experience; Tomb Raider Underworld
• Exclusive Discounts: Burn Zombie Burn  - 50% discount (inc. free exclusive Home item for Plus members who buy); Trine – 50% discount; Alien Breed: Impact – 20% discount; Gravity Crash – 50% discount; Ace Armstrong Vs. The Alien Scumbags – 20% – day 1 discount; Shatter soundtrack and Dynamic Theme – 50% discount
• DLC Exclusive: n/a
• Dynamic Themes: Exclusive Move ‘Start the Party’ theme; Exclusive ‘Halloween’ theme
• Premium avatars: Pain: Jarvis and Le Toot Avatars (2); SingStar: Wannabe and Rising Star Avatars (2)

October did look a little underwhelming in terms of content (with the exception of the acclaimed Trine at half price) until the announcement that Killzone 3 would be an exclusive beta for the first 10,000 Plus subscribers who sign up on October 13th.  This is a real draw as Killzone 2 is one of the best FPS games on the system.  Also, any new annual subscribers get an extra 3 months of Plus for no extra cost. IS ta enough to make you buy?

Tracking musical expenditure: August

A year ago I was inspired to embark on a year long project to monitor by monthly expenditure on music and music-related activities after hearing about a report which suggested that, instead of being the scourge of the music industry, file sharers were the customers most likely to spend more money on music than non-filesharers.  This claim was nothing to new to me - it was one I'd seen iterated time and again in various online file-sharing communities, but I was intrigued to see exactly how such a claim might be borne out when compared to my own spending habits.

This post is an attempt to tie up some loose ends and reflect upon my findings as I add up the expenditure for the final month of the year long tracking project.  Hopefully, I'll be able to offer some broader analysis of the full year in a later post.

If this is the first time you stumbled across this series of posts then there are a few baseline claims that might be worth pointing out:

• The typical file-sharer spends £77 a year on music
• Those who claim not to use file-sharing technology spend £44 per year on music
• Source: BBC

So, how did August measure up?

The total monthly spend on music and music-related activities (ie music games, musical equipment, concerts, etc) came in at a relatively high sum of £226.98 mainly due to some hardware required for a DJ gig.  Music games accounted for another lump sum of £77.32.  A much more modest total of £19.12 was spent on buying music, of which only £5.94 would have been classified as tradiational album/single content.



Overall, that brings the total spend for the last 12 months in at £1770.57 of which £206.87 was spend on albums and singles.  That's £129.87 more than the typical file-sharer spends on music in a year, and a whopping £162.87 more than is spent by those who denied they participated in file-sharing.  What does that tell us?  Well, I'm going to take a more detailed look at these figures in a future post.

Tracking musical expenditure: July

The month of July was a very quiet one for me in terms of musical purchases, so much so that I almost forgot to write this follow-up blog post. I'm normally meant to post these in the first week of the month, meaning that the final monthly post will follow hot on the heels of this one.

The penultimate month contained a mixture of music software purchases alongside content that would be single/album chart eligible, coming in at a modest total of £7.91 (of which £4.94 was spent on physical/digital music).  This brings the overall total spend to £1543.59 with the running total for albums/singles coming in at £200.93.


The final post in this year long project will follow in a week or two...

Tracking Playstation Plus: July update

In this post from a few days ago, I outlined some of the upcoming content for Playstation Plus subscribers in which the following material was to be offered throughout August:

• PSN: Zen Pinball
• minis: Blast-Off, Alien Zombie Death
• PSOne Classic: Medievil
• Full Game Trial: Infamous, Mushroom Wars
• Exclusive Discounts: Zen Pinball Earth Defense Table – 20%, Warhawk Triple Combo Pack – 50%, GT Club PS3/PSN – 50%, WipeOut HD Fury – 20%
• DLC: MotorStorm Pacific Rift: Adrenaline Pack
• Automatic download demo: Pixel Junk Shooter, Mafia 2
• Dynamic themes: Exclusive PlayStation Plus Theme, Exclusive ‘Clock’ Theme
• Premium avatars: Heavy Rain characters x 2

The official Sony blog has responded to European PS3 owners who were unhappy that our US cousins were receiving more regular weekly content updates by saying that Europeans will get some pleasant surprises throughout the month.  It's a sign that Sony is listening to its customers and are responding accordingly, as they look to improve their Plus service.  I have to keep reminding myself that this service is only a month old and that this is new territory for Sony who will improve the offerings based on what its paying customers tell it.

The additional perks this month include:

• 1 day early exclusive preview of Mafia 2 demo
• 2 week early exclusive launch of Pixel Junk Racers '2nd Lap' (free to owners of the original Pixel Junk Racers; 20% discount to newcomers)
• 2 week early exclusive launch of PS1 classic Tomb Raider (on Monday 16th)
• [EDIT] Plus subscribers were also given early access to the demo for Ruse

The Plus service seems to be improving as it grows, but at whose expensive?  There are quite a few comments on the Sony blog claiming that the company is 'gimping' its free service in order to make the subscription package seem worthwhile (see post #20 by GrimNebulinx).  Their issue seems to be that they believe the pre-release dates are nothing more than the real release dates that would have happened before the introduction of the subscription package, rendering the two-week delay for free users as the 'gimped' service.  It's interesting to see the Sony community writer, James Thorpe, try to rebuff these claims as earnestly as he can.

What do you think of this pre-release exclusivity? Is is worth the cash or effort?  Do you believe the Sony stance?

Tracking Playstation Plus: July

A new month means a review of the past month's PlayStation Plus purchases as outlined in this post, and a speculative glance to the coming months.  In case you aren't aware of what this series of posts is inspired by then I shall endeavour to summarise... IGN asked the question "Is Playstation Plus a good deal?" and asked for PlayStation users to join in, hence these posts.  So, do subscribers to the £39.99/$49.99/€49.99 service get good value for money?

Well, that's a trick question to answer, especially given that US subscribers get more content per month than European subscribers - clearly visible in the IGN charts in which the editors list games and DLC that are not available to Europeans.  It would seem that the US 'Plus' store was updated each week or two.    Nevertheless, I shall offer a personalised account of my 'Plus' experience and attempt to offer some objective analysis of the value of the service.  Firstly, let's review the first month:

Month 1 (June 2010)

I've already covered what the service entails in the first post but I thought it worthwhile to list all the options that were available to UK subscribers in the first month (as long as I can recall them!)

• Intro offer: LittleBigPlanet (standard edition)
• PSN PS3: Wipeout HD
• minis: Field Runners, Age of Zombies
• PSone: Destruction Derby
• Full Game Trial: Shatter, Savage Moon
• Discounts: LBP God of War Pack – 50%, LBP: LocoRoco costume pack – 50%, Gravity Crash – 20%, Fat Princess DLC – 20%
• Premium Game Element: KillZone 2:  Steel & Titanium DLC
• Push demo: ModNation Racers, Heavy Rain
• Themes: LBP Theme, SCEE produced: PlayStation “Game Is Just The Start” Dynamic Theme
• Premium Avatars: 2 x Fat Princess
• 24 hour early preview: Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days

It's worth noting that LittleBigPlanet was only available to the annual subscribers and not the 3 months package subscribers.  It's also the only game content that can be kept by people if they let their subscription lapse (excluding themes and avatars).  After the break you'll find a table of material I downloaded and purchased by means of the 'Plus' service.

In the launch material Sony made much of the claim that over £200 worth of content would be given away throughout the year.  Looking at the content I consumed, that claim looks like it will hold true.  I downloaded content to the value of £36.73 in the first month alone and that figure excludes LittleBigPlanet which is now listed in the PlayStation Store as £16.99 (despite it being a bit cheaper in its physical format from stores like Shopto or Play - surely digital content should be cheaper?).  A true total figure would come in at £53.72 if we include that content.

However, there are a few caveats I need to point out.  I already owned both LittleBigPlanet and Wipeout HD, as well as the 'premium' DLC for Killzone 2.  Frankly, I'd imagine many PS3 owners will already have these games given their critical acclaim and decent sales figures since they were launched (in fact I gave away my physical version of LittleBigPlanet to a pal).  Therefore I've added an extra field to the table called 'Saving' which shows how much the downloads would have cost had I purchased them in the traditional way.  This figure is more modest at £14.77.

There's another issue here too.  Of the content that I did download, I can safely say that it was unlikely that I would have ever purchased it had it not been included in the subscription package.  I had no interest in the Minis titles or the PSOne Classic game.  That's £11.97 worth of content that would never have been paid for.  I might have purchased the theme or the avatar so the true value for money on offer looks a little dubious.  I would have taken advantage of the Wipeout HD offer had I not already purchased it so that balances out.  A more sceptical take on the value of the content I may have paid for comes to £2.90

One negative consequence of the new service is that subscribers might be a little less eager to buy PSN games, preferring to wait and see what the Plus package will offer - a point made on the official Sony blog by user GothPunk.  I have certainly held back from buying games since the inception of Plus for this reason.  I'm also a sucker for discount/sale offers, as outlined (.pdf) by the behavioural economist Dan Ariely, and like to feel like I've got a bargain.  Consumer behaviour can be difficult to predict but there are tried and tested means for incentivising customers to purchase.  I fell for the discounted DLC offer on Fat Princess - a game I haven't played for about a year - but I'm no longer willing to buy full games, just in case they appear as part of the 'Plus' package.

Looking forwards

Yesterday Sony announced what content will make up the next two months of Playstation Plus

August:

• PSN: Zen Pinball
• minis: Blast-Off, Alien Zombie Death
• PSOne Classic: Medievil
• Full Game Trial: Infamous, Mushroom Wars
• Exclusive Discounts: Zen Pinball Earth Defense Table – 20%, Warhawk Triple Combo Pack – 50%, GT Club PS3/PSN – 50%, WipeOut HD Fury – 20%
• DLC: MotorStorm Pacific Rift: Adrenaline Pack
• Automatic download demo: Pixel Junk Shooter, Mafia 2
• Dynamic themes: Exclusive PlayStation Plus Theme, Exclusive ‘Clock’ Theme
• Premium avatars: Heavy Rain characters x 2

September

• PSN: Sam and Max: Devil’s Playground (entire season)
• minis: Vector Tower Defense, Echoes
• PSOne Classic: Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee
• Full Game Trial: Warhawk (with exclusive 50% discount for Plus members on purchase), Inferno Pool
• Exclusive Discounts: LBP: Ico and Shadow of Colossus costume pack – 50%
• Metal Gear Solid (PSOne) – 50%, Warhawk – 20%,  Pixel Junk Shooter – 20%, 
• DLC: Exclusive UFC Undisputed 2010 DLC
• Dynamic themes: Exclusive PlayStation Move theme, Exclusive ‘Fish Tank’ theme
• Premium avatars: Eye Pet Blue Goalie Avatar, Eye Pet DJ Avatar

This could be a shrewd move by Sony - by announcing what games/DLC are comng soon subscribers can decide whether or not to purchase the relavant titles.  For instance, will people hunt out cheap retail versions of MotorStorm Pacific Rift and UFC Undisputed 2010 knowing that they will be able to score on the free DLC?

Sony have also promised extra exclusive content will appear throughout the months. As for whether or not the announcements will act in Sony's favour or against them remains to be seen.  I'll report on August's value for money in the first week of September.

Is PlayStation Plus A Good Deal?

Over at IGN the Playstation team have been asking the very question: is the newly launched Playstation Plus service a good deal for users or is it a waste of cash?  For those who aren't quite au fait with what this service is or what it means, you can check out the Sony press release for full details, but I'll offer a brief summary of the main features below.

What is it?

Since it's launch  in November 2006 the Playstation 3 has had a free online network (entitled PSN) on which Playstation owners could speak to or message each other, play games with friends, browse the web and purchase content in the online store.  Everyone with an internet connection could use it free of charge - just as well, because the service could be pretty glitchy in the early days.  Microsoft have a similar service for their Xbox 360 called Live, except theirs came in two tiers: a Silver (free) and a Gold  variety (annual charge of £39.99).  The basic package allowed for some communication between members and the purchasing of downloadable content.  If you wanted extra features such as playing online games you had to pay the annual fee.  This had some advantages - namely Microsoft could invest that subscription fee into paying for servers to host content - something Sony struggled with at first.


Last week Sony announced Playstation Plus: their fee-based subscription service for the PS3 which retails at £39.99.  Unlike Microsoft, they still provide all of the online services that the PSN launched with.  Sony see Playstation Plus as a service that adds extra value to gamers by virtue of offering the following:

• Discount on games and/or downloadable content
• 4 free Playstation games per month (this includes old Playstation 1, Minis, and standard PSN titles)
• Premium avatars and themes
• Full game trials (a try-and-buy scheme using a full game rather than a limited demo)
• Early access to demos and beta versions of games
• Automatic content downloads and updates

In total Sony claim that Playstation Plus will offer subscribers content to the value of at least £200 per year.  There is a drawback though fail to renew your subscription and you lose all the 'free' gaming content you downloaded.  However, in order to offset that setback subscribers were given the excellent LittleBigPlanet game to keep even if they don't renew their subscription.  I already owned this game so it saves me nothing but some gamers may not have it.  You get to keep the avatars and themes but these are small value items.  So, the question remains, is £39.99 a good deal given that most Playstation gamers got by just fine on the PSN without spending a penny?  In order to work out if this is good value for money I'm going to join the staff at IGN in monitoring my use of the service.

Another tracking project...

In case you didn't guess, I subscribed to the service on launch day (June 29th) in order to see what the fuss was all about.  This give me the perfect excuse to emabark on another year long tracking project so it alongside my musical expenditure project.  I'm going to follow the strict rules set out by IGN:

For the next year, IGN PlayStation Executive Editor Greg Miller and IGN Guides Guru Colin Moriarty will track their PlayStation Plus PlayStation Network purchases every Wednesday. If they buy a full price game, it won't be logged here. On the chalkboards below, we'll track what the "free" content would have cost them as well as the discounts they're receiving. Now, these figures will only include new stuff that the boys have downloaded. If they already own a piece of content, it won't be included just because it has been discounted or marked as free. This is strictly what they've downloaded under the PlayStation Plus umbrella to date. 

The IGN staff are only counting the cash saved via the discount scheme, but I will add an extra field to include the value of the digital items that are kept after the subscription lapses (ie the avatars and themes).    Also, one of the PSN games that is 'free' this month is Wipeout HD - a game I already own so there is no real benefit to me this month.

If you want to see how much 'value' the Playstation Plus service is to a regular gamer check back here in a few weeks.

Tracking musical expenditure: June

Month 10 of my tracking project and there was a fair bit of cash spent on music-related activities, mainly due to the Glastonbury 2010 music festival (which was great in case you missed any of the BBC coverage).  A total of £240.15 was spent in June, of which £210 of that was blown on festival activities. I also bought a couple of bits of clothing merchandise (a David Bowie t-shirt and a Guns'n'Roses t-shirt).

As for traditional albums or singles sales a rather modest sum £3.37 was spent on chart eligible material.  The running total on albums/singles is £195.99 with the grand total being £1535.68.  It would seem that expenditure in the musical economy is alive and kicking - it has migrated into non-traditional areas.

Tracking musical expenditure: 3/4

I've spenta few ours tidying up the spreadsheet and breaking down the data into coherent months.  This has enabled me to create some simple visualisations of the expenditure to date:


The next graph shows the peaks and troughs of my expenditure:




This final chart shows the albums and singles only:

Tracking musical expenditure: May

I'm three quarters of the way through my year long tracking experiment and May sees an unexpected distribution of the expenditure on music related items (see pie chart below) with 38.9% of sales going on vinyl. I don't own a record player!  Granted, I bought two records to give away as birthday gifts to my brother-in-law but I did buy one for myself.  I guess I'm firmly in the demographic that still buys physical media saying as digital music sales only accounted for 1.6% of sales.


How does this all break down in the bigger scheme of things?

May's total spend came in at £48.73.  This does include clothing/merchandise (a rather fetching Sonic Youth - Goo T-shirt) so if we exclude that to focus on music only sales the figure comes in at £35.74 (singles = £27.75; albums = £7.99)  The total expenditure to date is £1295.53 with the total for just albums and singles coming in at £192.62.  In my next blog post I'm going to look at which formats I've been buying most.

Tracking musical expenditure: April

Sheesh, these are getting later and later in the month.  I started publishing these posts at the start of the month but work commitments have been pretty intense recently.  Let's get down to business...

I bought a few musical items last month, including a 'digital service'.  After an 'anonymous' source (yes, DT, I know it was you) decided to phone Crimestoppers and the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) with false allegations that I had been running an 'industrial' scale DVD piracy operation out of my workplace my electronic communications have been subject to monitoring and interception by my employers, I figured it would be a great opportunity to try a VPN service to encrypt and hide all my web access.  Not that I have anything to hide, but I felt a bit violated by the fact that an anonymous claim took precedence over my integrity, so I decided to make it a little awkward for any prying eyes.  I opted to try iPREDator, the service popular with Swedish web-users following the Pirate Bay verdict.  It was easy to setup, but in all fairness I've never really had much use for it.



April's total spend came in at £43.74.  If we take away the anonymity service the figure comes in at £30.54 of which £1.59 was a Guitar Hero game track.  So, traditional single and album sales come in a more modest £28.95, with vinyl taking a significant chunk of the cash (well it was Record Store Day after all).  The total expenditure to date is £1246.80 with the total for just albums and singles coming in at £156.88

Tracking musical expenditure: March

This is a bit of a delayed addition in the series of posts tracking my expenditure on music and music related services, mainly due to work commitments, activism and the 'odd' media appearance (emphasis well and truly on odd).

March was a bit of a quiet month for music purchases. I bought a couple of CDs and some software which grabs missing artwork for digital music files. Nothing exciting there then. The software was one fo the MacHeist charity bundles hence the inflated price - there are many free alternatives out there but I was feeling charitable. The total spend in March was £33.03. If we just include the albums the figure is a more modest £19.73.  This brings the running total to £127.93 for albums and singles, and £1203.06 for all music-related activities.

The month ahead had me in two minds, especially given the ascension into law of the Digital Economy Act.  I was half toying with the idea of boycotting all music purchases as part of a 2 month campaign to hit the music industry in the pocket for all it's lobbying of MPs, but that went out the window due to Record Store Day - a day in which music fans are meant to support the good old vinyl and independent record stores.  Instead, I decided to invest money I could have spent on CDs on an anonymous VPN  More on that next month...

Tracking musical expenditure: February

Half way there! This is the sixth monthly instalment so we should get a clear indication as to how the project might pan out. In case you haven't been reading this series of posts (shame on you!), I've been running a year long project to monitor the amount of cash I have spent on music and music-related activities, inspired by a DEMOS report which stated that file-sharers typically spent more money (£77 per year) on music than non-filesharers (£33).

February was a big month for me, not least because I had to pay the remaining balance of my Glastonbury ticket, but also because there were a few albums I was looking forward to by Massive Attack and Yeasayer (which I already had wink wink before their release). Let's take a look at the figures...

The total monthly spend on music in February was £227.91! There were a few a couple of concert tickets in there which inflated the figure. Spending on traditional albums and singles were modest by comparison at £27.96, but that's still more than a typical month. I did win a little money on a bet so I bought a couple of extra CDs when I was feeling flush.

As for the overall total, it's standing at £1170.03. In terms of cash spent overall on what would be classified as singles or albums (as the wording in the DEMOS report goes), the figure comes in at £108.20 - that's nearly 4 times the figure quoted for the average non-filesharer. What does that tell ya?

As ever, you can see my my progress to date by clicking this link or take a little look at the spreadsheet below.

Tracking musical expenditure: January

This is the fifth monthly installment in a yearlong project to monitor the amount of cash I have spent on music and music-related activities. In case this is the first time you've stumbled across this blog then the inspiration behind this series of posts was a report (.ppt) published by the UK-based think tank, Demos, which stated that file-sharers typically spent more money (£77 per year) on music than non-filesharers (£33). The suggestion here is that pirates are the best customers, or at the very least are the ones willing to part with the most cash.

January was a busy month for me. It was filled with quite a few purchases of 'old' music media (ie CDs) - well a few by my standards at least - and a few live concert ticket purchases. In total £119.66 was spent on music and music-related activities. The latter category includes any money that was spent on the back of music purchases, like concert merchandise and/or refreshments that would not otherwise have been purchased were it not for the musical event. This brings the running total to date up to £942.10.

Going back to the music purchases, out of that £119.66 only £36.81 was spent on music (ie singles, albums, etc). The bulk of the money was spent on live concerts and tickets. Also, some of the music purchases included non-traditional music media such as video game downloads for the Guitar Hero series. If I strip down the sales to money spent on what we would classify as chart eligible singles and album the monthly expenditure comes down to a more meager £25.96 - all of which was spent on buying both the Vampire Weekend albums twice (to give as gifts). That brings the money spent on albums and singles (the measure in the Demos report) in at £80.24

I have to admit that I did not expect to reach and surpass the figure that Demos placed as the average spent by pirates after only 5 months. There's still a long way to go in this experiment, but one thing seems to be sure and that is this music lover still contributes to the musical economy.

And did I fail to mention that Massive Attack have an album out in February? There's at least one purchase for next month.

As usual, you can see a detailed breakdown of expenditure here.

Tracking musical expenditure: November

This month has been a curious month in terms of purchases as a number of factors have come together to produce a few interesting things - call it serendipity. Firstly, I had planned on doing all my Christmas shopping online in November given the recent postal strikes delaying things. Having said this, I only ended up buying one CD as a gift so the impact this will have in the big scheme of things is minimal at best. Secondly, Juno Records gave me £5 worth of credit to spend on digital downloads for being a member of an online fan community. This might have been money I wouldn't have typically spent but never look a gift horse. Thirdly, a filesharing site I have access to was 'promoting' the iTunes LP format, which have all sorts of extra features, which led me to buy one from the limited range on offer. Fourthly, I purchased a Sunday paper solely in order to get a 'free' live album (via iTunes) which needs to be taken into account - it's unlikely that I'd have bought the paper otherwise.

All said and done, this month's expenditure on music comes in at £27.63, bringing the grand total to date of £770.49.

If we go only on single and album sales to date the figure arrives at £51.85

After a quarter of the year has passed, it seems that the amount spent on music has began to increase

It seems I'm getting closer to the £77 figure mentioned in the Demos report from October 2009 (Powerpoint file here: 3.7 mb). I wonder how, if at all, the Virgin Media/Universal deal will impact on those sales hen it eventually gets rolled out? If Virgin Media customers have full access to Universal's back catalogue, will they spend less on music? I'm still waiting for pricing plans for this service to be announced