Study: Napster use tailing off

The average number of songs shared on Napster took another steep drop in April, according to a study by research firm Webnoize. After the file-swapping company's attempts to screen out trades of copyrighted works through its service, the average number of songs shared per person dropped from 72 to 37 in April, Webnoize said. An average person was making 220 songs available to other Napster users at the start of March before the filters kicked in, the study noted.

Webnoize also estimated that the number of songs actually traded--a more difficult measure to come by--dropped to 1.59 billion songs in April from an estimated 2.79 billion in February. Other companies have measured Napster usage in different ways. The record industry has consistently criticized Napster's filtering efforts as too little, too late. The company significantly boosted the strength of its screening process last week.