While the Big Five do their best to kick the stuffing out of the mom-and-pop P2P file-sharers, they’re nonetheless looking to downloads for some kind of salvation, having arrived in Europe with Apple’s iTunes and, to a much lesser extent, Napster 2, carrying the tattered corporate music portfolios.
What’s so great about the 70 million or so downloads Apple says iTunes managed in more than a year, compared to the one billion (at a conservative estimate) that happen on the peer-to-peer networks every month? The “one billion” figure, which comes from industry observer Big Champagne, helps make the point that downloads from iTunes and the other plastic online music stores supplied by the Big Five record labels don’t amount to a hill of beans.
But it does raise a question about how many unique songs are available on peer-to-peer networks. So I got in touch with Big Champagne CEO Eric Garland, who had this to say:
“Let’s look just at titles — the variety of music, with no consideration of the popularity of one title over another,” said Garland. “Virtually every title that has ever been popular with any audience, no matter how small, is available at one time or another on P2P networks.”
