Here are some digital downloading and music-related links I didn’t get around to posting on Friday:
The Economist: Is the threat of online piracy receding?
People in the music industry are feeling more optimistic than they have for years. Apple’s digital music-download service, iTunes, has won customers in far greater numbers than once seemed possible. This week saw the launch of Napster 2.0, a paying version of the service shut down by big music and the courts in 2002 because its software allowed people to share songs for free. Legal, paid-for online services, music executives hope, together with lawsuits against file-sharers, could save the industry from internet piracy.
bIPlog: RIAA Lawsuit Party
eMarketer: Music Downloading: Wrong, But Going Strong
70% of teenage consumers say they have downloaded music. When asked whether they consider such an act to be wrong, over 47% of all respondents said “yes” but just 32.6% of teenage respondents said the same.
NPD Group: Consumers Delete Large Numbers of Digital Music Files From PC Hard Drives
In August 1.4 million households deleted all the digital music files saved on their PC hard drives. Prior to August, deletions were at much lower levels. For example in May of 2003, when NPD first began to track music file deletions, 606,000 households deleted all digital music files from their PCs. Eighty percent of the consumers who deleted files had fewer than 50 files saved; just 10 percent had more than 200 files.
