Comments on: Number of music file-swappers falls, study says

Fewer households are downloading music illegally, but hard-core swappers remain active, researchers say.

[Gmacson]

Its still strong as ever

I dont know what these old people are smoking but im the only
person i know that actually likes to buy CD and doesnt have a
single illegal song. Im happy with listening to others music via
iTunes.

Everyone else shares. They just do it by different means now. No
one is stupid enough to use napster or other sites that are watched
over like vultures picking on broke kids.

[Steamed Clam]

BS.....

They say it's because of threats and the heavy-handed RIAA! Sorry, it's not. It's because we've been given a viable alternative in Napster, iTunes and the like. Now we can compile albums of music we actually want rather than deal with the greedy-ass record companies spoon-feeding us the garbage they're putting out. "Here's two good songs and eight crappy fillers!"

Sorry, RIAA, you'd like to think you scare the people, but you don't.

[Steamed Clam]

Oh, and....

We're not spending the money on their over-priced CDs either! $17!! BAH! We're finally getting music at a price we can live with.

[bobby_brady]

Because people have bought the music they wanted

Does the music industry think every quarter they should get a infinate perpetual increase in sales?

[skeptik]

gotta love statisitics...

Now it appears that many casual swappers have turned to other means of downloading music. The number of music files that are still being traded, however, has remained fairly flat, and actually increased slightly, from an estimated 258 million in June to 266 million in October.
"This is not atypical consumer behavior," Crupnick said. "There will always be some really committed users regardless of whether supply is cut or demand is impacted."

It sounds like an admission that the bulk of the downloading is done by a few individuals.
Which if you think about it goes a long way to debunking the industry claims that P2P was killing their business and all those downloads represented lost sales.
If most people downloaded a few tunes, the industry wasn't losing much from them and if the few people that download many tunes were cut off completely, does anyone really believe that they would buy all those tunes, or that they purchased them prior to being able to download them for free?