James Delahunty
9 Jan 2006 21:15
In the week between Christmas day and New Years Day, music downloaders purchased over 20 million tracks, smashing the previous record of 9.5 million which was set just the week before. Of course, the obvious explanation for the boost in downloads is the number of people who received MP3 players or download vouchers as gifts. The figure of downloads was more than three times the amount over the same period in 2004. However, while the numbers are growing at a huge rate, they still haven't caught up with P2P.
BigChampagne, a P2P monitoring company estimates that music tracks downloaded from P2P still beat those downloaded from legitimate sources at a ratio of at least three to one. The company believes that up to 250 million tracks can be downloaded in any week on file sharing networks. P2P services would have also seen a massive amount of new users after Christmas looking to get tracks for their new MP3 players.
For the first time ever, MP3 player sales have surpassed those of personal CD players according to NPD. "We have definitely moved from MP3 players being a computer-oriented product to a consumer-directed product," said Stephen Baker of NPD.
Source:
BBC News