Due to the increasing vigilance of music the music industry, in partiular music companies combined with the punishments and subsequent notoriety if caught, file-swappers are switching over to paid-services like iTunes and Napster to download music, according to the latest survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. However, songs being swapped via file sharing still continues, albeit on a smaller scale and via alternate methods.
The survey found that Americans are moving out of the traditional peer-to-peer (P2P) network used for swapping files. The number of music file downloaders increased to 43% up from 24% in 2004. The Pew survey was conducted among 1421 US adult Internet users.
The survey further says that prompt legal action by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is partly responsible for this shift from the P2P network to the more noticeable avenues.
19% of the respondents admitted that they downloaded music using their iPod's. Mary Madden, a research specialist at Pew who wrote the report, says that this figure is surprising because products like the iPod are not designed to support file sharing between devices. She adds, "With the everyday use of e-mail and IM, it's interesting to see that around one in four downloaders get their files that way. People aren't sending entire albums, but if they hear a song and want to share it with a friend, they might be more comfortable sending it over IM [than using P2P software],"
Meanwhile the number of users who download music has increased from 18% last year to around 22% in January this year.
