1. aside from the lame excuse that p2p is illegal what reason do people have to switch? itunes and other music stores offer nothing to a p2p user other than safety from the 1 in 100,000 chance they will be attacked by the riaa.

Posted at 4:30AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Ron Amadeo

2. Maybe it's just me, but I don't see any correlation between the numbers in the press release and the numbers in the graph. The graph says that in July the p2p number (no idea what unit of measurement) is at 5853, while the press release says 6.4 million households downloaded music for free over a P2P network.

Also, how much of that free music was licensed under the Creative Commons or in the public domain?

Posted at 4:30AM on Dec 19th 2005 by George

3. Has anyone else noticed that Attorney General Voldemort is beginning to bend to the whims of the music and movie industries? Shouldn't we be just a little concerned that the man seems eager to turn nearly 60 million Americans into enemy combatants?

http://www.permanent4.com/2004/10/war-on-piracytm.html

Posted at 4:30AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Permanent4

4. As commented above, the article does not have much to do with the graph. There is mention of how the paid downloads decresed, but no mention of why P2P downloads also decreased at the same time.
In my opinion, one of the huge issues that the paid sites have to work out is selection. Even the largest pay sites do not have all that is available on P2P and Newsgroups.
The Music Industry seems to have forgotten that people want what they want and will do what they need to do to get it.

Posted at 4:30AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Jonathan Magnus

5. what are you buying when you "buy" and song download? more people are thinking about this question and more people are realizing that the answer is something like "I just bought the limited rights to listen to a DRM-wrapped song on a limitied number of devices at a lower quality than CD. And it cost the same as a single cost 20 years ago _ about a buck." Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

Posted at 4:30AM on Dec 19th 2005 by grip gibbs

6. How exactly is it possible to show the P2P values? Its peer to peer remember!

Posted at 4:30AM on Dec 19th 2005 by jonny orange

7. Even though the story has little to do with the graph, I find the graph much more fascinating. First it shows that paid music downloading IS growing and in fact it seems like both have growed at about the same rate.

Subtract for growth of internet use and what do you get? I wonder.

I think the April thing is all about the itunes/etc promotions. Basically you talk about itunes/paying for downloading music online and you also are advertising p2p downloads too.

Posted at 4:30AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Walter

8. According to iTMS sales as reported by Apple, they sold 20M tracks between Mar 15 and Apr 27, or roughly 13M tracks for the month of April. So how could the article say paid downloads reached 1.3M? What am I missing?

Posted at 4:30AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Dave Winzler

9. something about this information is completely wrong... unless it is an average of 1.3 million songs per *day* in the month, not in the month overall, and then something would still be wrong with how the article was written since they never mention that it was 1.3 million per DAY.

Posted at 4:30AM on Dec 19th 2005 by chuck

10. I don't know if some of you guys aren't even bothering to read the article or what. It's 1.3 million USERS, not 1.3 million DOWNLOADS. Or are you assuming that every iTunes user buys one song and then never buys anything again? I would guess most iTunes users buy a decent number of songs, which would mean the 70 million downloads (or however many they're up to now) is spread out over a user base about an order of magnitude lower. Some of those people probably did only buy a few songs and then quit, so they get churned out of the user base in this graph. 1.3 million users sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

As for the press release correlating with the graph, how are you not seeing the "6443" above July? Did nobody teach you people how to read a graph? That's 6.4 million people according to the graph.

And as for how you measure P2P, you do it with statistical sampling. Some innumerates don't believe in statistical sampling, but this is a scientific, mathematical process with results that can be proven within a set margin of error - not believing in it is like saying you don't believe 2+2=4. It's how almost all market research is done.

Posted at 4:30AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Jeff

11. I reject the graph's implication that p2p is the alternative to legal--in other words, p2p is illegal. p2p is not inherently illegal, nor is all music traded on p2p sites copyrighted.

Posted at 4:30AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Loraan

12. The paid download charts correlate well with Apple's sales milestones.

From 15-Dec to 15-Mar: Apple avg daily rate of 277K. (25M to 50M)
From 15-Mar to 28-Apr: Apple avg daily rate of 454K. (50M to 70M)
From 28-Apr to 12-Jul: Apple avg daily rate of 400K. (70M to 100M)

But look at what happens next:
From 12-Jul to 1-Sep: Apple avg daily rate of 490K. (100M to 125M)
From 1-Sep to 14-Oct: Apple avg daily rate of 581K. (125M to 150M)

Given the explosion in iPod (and maybe other music player) sales this last quarter, I think that rate will continue to increase.

Posted at 4:30AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Kmark

13. swapping music you would have had to otherwise buy is a violation of copyright laws. this is how these people make their living. I know you like free stuff, but you dont shoplift do you? Or i guess you would if you only had a 1 in 100,000 chance of getting caught. nice......

Posted at 4:30AM on Dec 19th 2005 by bill c

14. aside from the lame excuse that p2p is illegal what reason do people have to switch? itunes and other music stores offer nothing to a p2p user other than safety from the 1 in 100,000 chance they will be attacked by the riaa.

Posted at 4:30AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Ron Amadeo

15. Maybe it's just me, but I don't see any correlation between the numbers in the press release and the numbers in the graph. The graph says that in July the p2p number (no idea what unit of measurement) is at 5853, while the press release says 6.4 million households downloaded music for free over a P2P network.

Also, how much of that free music was licensed under the Creative Commons or in the public domain?

Posted at 4:30AM on Dec 19th 2005 by George

16. Has anyone else noticed that Attorney General Voldemort is beginning to bend to the whims of the music and movie industries? Shouldn't we be just a little concerned that the man seems eager to turn nearly 60 million Americans into enemy combatants?

http://www.permanent4.com/2004/10/war-on-piracytm.html

Posted at 4:30AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Permanent4

17. As commented above, the article does not have much to do with the graph. There is mention of how the paid downloads decresed, but no mention of why P2P downloads also decreased at the same time.
In my opinion, one of the huge issues that the paid sites have to work out is selection. Even the largest pay sites do not have all that is available on P2P and Newsgroups.
The Music Industry seems to have forgotten that people want what they want and will do what they need to do to get it.

Posted at 4:30AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Jonathan Magnus

18. what are you buying when you "buy" and song download? more people are thinking about this question and more people are realizing that the answer is something like "I just bought the limited rights to listen to a DRM-wrapped song on a limitied number of devices at a lower quality than CD. And it cost the same as a single cost 20 years ago _ about a buck." Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

Posted at 4:30AM on Dec 19th 2005 by grip gibbs

19. How exactly is it possible to show the P2P values? Its peer to peer remember!

Posted at 4:30AM on Dec 19th 2005 by jonny orange

20. Even though the story has little to do with the graph, I find the graph much more fascinating. First it shows that paid music downloading IS growing and in fact it seems like both have growed at about the same rate.

Subtract for growth of internet use and what do you get? I wonder.

I think the April thing is all about the itunes/etc promotions. Basically you talk about itunes/paying for downloading music online and you also are advertising p2p downloads too.

Posted at 4:30AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Walter