To download the Discouraged Listener Index Survey, click here.

 

"The Discouraged Listener Index is one of the most incendiary and revolutionary concepts to come down the pike in a long time. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that no one in the Industry thought of it before."

- Bob Burke, Director of Social Sciences and History, Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore, MD

 

 

"...it is clear that the discouraged listener phenomenon is a real problem that is not being sufficiently addressed by the
Recording Industry, which has put a disproportionate amount of its energy and resources into fighting
file sharing. From the strategy it has taken, it would appear that the RIAA believes file sharing to be the
sole source of its woes. The results of the Fitehouse DLI survey strongly suggest otherwise."

- Conclusion of the Discouraged Listenerner Index Survey

The Discouraged Listener Index Survey

 

Fitehouse was appalled that the Recording Industry was using the argument that file-sharing was killing its revenues as justification for its legal suits against students. They provided no evidence for their claims, yet not one was standing up to their allegations . From conversations with friends, it seemed to Fitehouse that people were just frustrated with the crap coming from commercial radio and were starting to give up on music. To Josh Cohen, the band's  ex-economist, this sounded a lot like what happens to folks in a bad jobs market. At first they may look for a job and not get one (and the official stats will count them as unemployed). After a while, they may just stop looking altogether. Rather than calling them unemployed, economists call these people "Discouraged Workers" Fitehouse had a theory and needed to test it.


Unlike the half-wits at the RIAA, Fitehouse would not go spouting unsubstantiated rubbish but rather would subject its ideas to academic rigor and peer review. Hence was born the Discouraged Listenered Index Survey. With questions carefully crafted by Cohen (who had spent 4 years conducting business climate surveys in Mexico City), the band sought to measure the phenomenon of individuals giving up on purchasing CDs  given the poor quality and variety of musical offerings.


So Fitehouse hit the bars, the taverns, the outdoor festivals and the public spaces. With survey in hand, they approached Baltimore Citizenry to solicit their participation in series of question about their CD buying habits. And gosh, it seems that whle folks hate being surveyed over the phone, they sure love it when you approach them at a bar -- we got a lot of good information -- and a lot of offers for us to stick around and share some beers!


Before they knew it, Fitehouse had created a unique index for taking the pulse of the listening public and for measuring a growing, and disturbing phenomenon: discouraged listeners were dropping out of the music marketplace. File sharers weren't behind the Industry collapse -- the Recording Industry itself was sowing the seeds of its own demise.

 

 

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