Decreased P2P download statistics

Lasse Penttinen
21 Aug 2003 13:40

The Peer-to-Peer file sharing activity of the consumers seems to have slightly fallen, or so claims the NPD study.

NPD tracks consumer file-sharing activity. It calculated that 14.5 million US households downloaded music files in April. In May the figure fell to 12.7 million, and dropped to 10.4 million in June, the company said today.

But sometimes the statistics can be fooling as...

in April some 852 million songs were acquired via the Internet. Come June, the figure fell to 655 million. April, says NPD, was a record-setting month, but the fact it doesn't provide a figure for May, suggests the dip was relatively small.
Indeed, the average number of files downloaded per household grew between April and June, from 59 to 63.

It could be that the recent and more aggressive actions by RIAA, which have been targeted towards individuals may have scared some P2P-users. Also, corporations may now be more aware of the P2P-usage, and have been monitoring the Internet usage of the employees more closely. One must also take into account that the summer time typically is less active in the Internet, as the northern side of the globe is enjoying the summer vacation season - vacations at least have an impact in web browsing activity.
Well, at least it’s certain that recently there were a number of U.S. citizens that weren’t file sharing due to lack of electricity. Perhaps the blackout was a RIAA plot as well? ;)
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