Lee

Got broadband at home and work? You're probably a criminal

As legal music downloading takes off as never before, music pirates are shunning peer-to-peer services in favour of using iPods to swap music.

According to a report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, the number of music downloaders using P2P networks has dropped in recent months. Currently, 21 per cent of downloaders use networks such as Kazaa or Grokster for music or video, compared to the 58 per cent who downloaded music from file-sharing networks in February 2004.



By contrast, other methods of swapping music are gaining favour. Alongside IM, blogs and other sources, iPods are becoming a popular music transfer tool. Eleven per cent of former file-sharers admitted to using iPods or other MP3 players to swap songs in the past, compared to the 15 per cent of downloaders as a whole who currently do.

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Steevo

G-mail or free Yahoo 250Mb anyone?


People will ALWAYS find a way to get something for nothing. Or next to nothing.

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the_music_man

percent*

Xie

These numbers are probably close to what they have always been just nobody cared to "study" them before.

Nothing to see here .. move along.

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Luna

I really don't see Ipods ever being a problem.

I mean who really wants to drive around sharing music with your friends off your ipod when you can do it while sitting at a chair in your house.

"Oh Jon, you want the new Keane CD? Oh Well let me get my ipod and I'll be over in 20 minutes!"

hell, you might as well just copy the CD.

jdbrookes

Yeah I can see how sharing music this way is getting popular. A couple of my buddies have MP3 players or iPods, and we all have fairly different music collections. In the last few months we've brought all our MP3 players together a couple of times and we swap around the goods! I've been introduced to some great music I would never have heard of (or bought a CD of) before.

Its hardly anything new though, as Xie said. Everybody used to share minidiscs and stuff before, and I had a collection of loads of cassette tapes before digital music storage. Most of that was recorded off friends tapes or the radio.

In fairness, iPods just do this on a much much larger scale. If I was the music industry I'd be worried. I'd be increasingly releasing mixed-mode CDs with CD- or DVD-ROM features, extra artwork, interviews etc to add value.. Oh wait, they are!

David