Forbes is reporting that illegal music downloading increased by 25% between March 2004 and March 2005, and that legal purchases from online music stores has increased by 52%, all while iPod sales have increased by 500%. "As long as peer-to-peer networking exists," the article says, "people will steal music. The best music labels and legal services can really hope for is a slowdown in growth, which already appears to be happening." If the trend continues, legal downloads will outpace illegal ones eventually, but it'll be a long time coming.
1. The numbers in that Forbes article are deeply suspect. 250m p2p downloads during a month. Go and look at the Big Champagne top 10 music/video per week. The top 10 represent approx 50m *per week*. Add in the long tail. And P2P downloads are probably a factor of 10 bigger.
Posted at 4:32AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Julian Bond