Downloading Music More... And Less: Report

American Netizens are downloading music more and less, according to a new study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, which says an estimated 17 million American Netizens no longer download music files but 23 million say they do.

Basing their finding on a survey of 1,371 adult Netizens between February and March, co-authors Lee Rainie and Mary Madden of Pew, and comScore's Dan Hess and Graham Mudd, said a third of the former downloaders blamed the music industry's subpoena-and-sue campaign against peer-to-peer music file swappers for their stoppages, while an estimated 60 percent of those who haven't downloaded music yet say they won't even think about it because of the music industry actions.

The report also said KaZaA's user base in particular dropped between November 2003 and February 2004, with about 5 million fewer people estimated to have discontinued actively running the popular P2P program. But smaller and lesser-known programs like iMish, BitTorrent, and eMule showed small hikes in usage in the same period.

And, the report continued, a majority of those still downloading music actively remain "indifferent" to copyright considerations. "58 percent of them said they did not care about the copyright on the files that they download in the February survey," the authors wrote. "Still, there has been striking growth in the number of downloaders who say they do care about the copyright on those files." The authors said that in February-May 2003, 27 percent said they cared about the copyrights, but in February 2004 that figure rose to 37 percent.

Video downloading rose, the authors said, from 13 percent of those surveyed in November-December 2003 to 15 percent in the February tally.

The authors also said multiple factors might have contributed to the incumbent overall media downloading slump, including fewer releases, higher prices, and the struggling economy.

By Pew's reckoning, March found 11.2 million unique visitors to six major online music sites, including MusicMatch.com, with 5.3 million unique visitors; Napster, revived by Roxio as a pay-to-play service, with 2.6 million unique visitors; iTunes Music Store, with 2.3 million unique visitors; Listen.com sites, with 1.4 million unique visitors; Wal-Mart Music Store, with 535,000 unique visitors; and, Liquid.com, with 169,000 unique visitors.