Survey: Music file sharing on the decrease

Chicago (IL) - Research from Pew Internet & American Life suggests that adult Internet users are less likely to use music file sharing services. Legal threats convinced one in seven users to no longer download music from the Internet.

After suing 1977 music downloaders, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has proof that its battle against file-sharers shows first signs of success. According to a survey released by Pew Internet & American Life, 60 percent of Internet users who have not downloaded music so far are scared completely away from music downloading.

38 percent of music downloaders said they would download music less often and 33 percent of people who have stopped music downloading quoted the threat of lawsuits for ceased their downloading activities. The latter group represents 14 percent of all former American music downloaders - about 17 million people, Pew Internet said.

According to data released bei market research firm Comscore Media Metrix, file sharing user numbers of Kazaa reached their peak in June 2003 with almost 35 million American users. That number has dropped to about 20 million February of this year. Other popular services such as BearShare, WinMX, Grokster, eMule and iMesh also lost significant user numbers. The only growing service was BitTorrent (220,000 to 380,000 users), according to the data provided.

While Pew Internet’s survey among 1371 Internet users showed a decrease of music downloading year-over-year, the group reported a growth of downloading since its February 2004 survey. The growth is attributed in a small part to file-sharing services such as iMesh and eMule and largely to legal download services which appear to gain traction. According to Comscore Media Metrix, more than 11 million Internet users visit such services regularly. Musicmatch.com leads the pack with 5.3 million users, followed by Napster (2.6 million), iTunes (2.3 million), Listen.com (1.4 million), and Walmart (535,000).

According to Mary Madden, research specialist for Pew Internet & American Life, the survey was solely focused on the effects of legal threats of the RIAA. In an upcoming survey the group will publish data about the effects of viruses in file sharing services as well as the satisfaction level of users with legal music download services.