Dramatic Drop Seen In Music Swapping

RIAA Lawsuits Appear To Be Stopping Trend

POSTED: 9:02 am PST January 5, 2004

The recording industry's legal fight against music downloading may be forcing people to stop going online for digital music, a new study says.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project said the percentage of Americans downloading music files dropped by half and the numbers who are downloading files on any given day have plunged since the Recording Industry Association of America began filing suits in September against those suspected of copyright infringement.

One-fifth of those who say they continue to download or share files online say they are doing so less often because of the suits.

The survey of 1,358 Internet users in November and December showed that the percentage of music file downloaders had fallen to 14 percent from 29 perecnt, or to 18 million from about 35 million, in the spring.

Steep drops in downloading were recorded among students, broadband users, young adults and Internet veterans.

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It was backed by dated from comScore Media Matrix, which showed signficant drops in how many people were using peer-to-peer sharing applications. From November 2002 to November 2003, for exmaple, the percentage of people using KaZaa and Grokster dropped 15 percent and 59 percent, respectively.

"We have never seen an Internet activity drop off this dramatically," said Mary Madden, a Pew research specialist.

The Pew study did not differentiate between free trading services and industry-affiliated sites. However, it appears that the drop came from unofficial services, because comScore also saw more than 2.7 million people visiting both Napster and Apple's iTunes Music Store -- sites that offer legal music downloads -- in November.