P2P Music Downloads At All-Time Low

RedEaredSlider writes "According to research group NPD Group, the shuttering of Limewire's music file sharing service has led to a similar decline in the usage of such services throughout the US. The number has gone from a high of 16 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007 to just nine percent in the fourth quarter of 2010, right after Limewire shut down its file-sharing services due to a court order, when a federal judge sided with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)."

Comments

Crappy Music

[denshao2]

There isn't much left to download.

And...

[redemtionboy]

Music sales suddenly skyrocket right? Right?? Oh, they're still abysmal. Never mind then.

shitty statistics

[fwice]

The number has gone from a high of 16 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007 to just nine percent in the fourth quarter of 2010

16% of what? the article doesn't mention.

16% of the population? 16% of what it used to be?

Was shutting down Limewire the real cause?

[Itesh]

Or are services like Pandora, Spotify, and even iTunes giving the consumers what they want at a price they want and thus helping to drive pirating down?

Re:Was shutting down Limewire the real cause?

[Gabrosin]

This. Streaming services make it a lot easier to hear the music you want whenever you want without having to download OR pay for it. I'm partial to Grooveshark myself, but Pandora's pretty good too.

Re:I smell RIAA trolls today...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh, both of you ACs, how can you listen to such terrible quality???

All time low?

[jolyonr]

You mean lower than they were in, say, 1776?

Re:How about the fact....

[drinkypoo]

You don't really want original music. You want music that sounds like something else you like.

There is no reason why a mix of two songs that suck can't be fantastic. I don't like to eat cabbage or lactobacillus but I love sauerkraut. "Fusion cuisine" is usually an excuse for some stupid food concept that is being pushed on you but once in a while it results in nirvana, like the potato, pesto, and garlic pizza at Escape from NY. Potato on a pizza sounds stupid until you eat it. (Of course, the stuff is also a poster child for thisiswhyyourefat...)

Anyway I'm not into Jay-Z and the number of Beatles songs I think are worth a crap can be counted on one hand but DJ Danger Mouse's Grey Album is one of the best things I've ever heard. So basically I think you are being ridiculous.

Re:How about the fact....

[dkleinsc]

(If they were musicians, they would create their own original music)

That's not really true though. For starters, the line between "original" and "unoriginal" music isn't very clear. Which of these groups is creating original music?
- The Boston Symphony Orchestra playing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with a fantastic new interpretation
- A group playing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on kazoos
- A disco group who took Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and rewrote it with a dance beat
- A DJ who took the BSO's recording of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and made a great dance beat with it
- An MC who took the DJ's great dance beat and busted some rhymes to it.
- A folk singer who goes to some obscure area of Hungary, learns a popular folk song from that area, translates the lyrics, and records and popularizes it in the US
- A second folk singer who adds 10 new verses to that same folk song

All of them took a musical legacy, added some twists or nuances to it, and made something new. But in the RIAA's worldview, the DJ, MC, and second folk singer did something thoroughly horrible.