In 2006, the number of households with PCs that downloaded at least one song using free peer-to-peer software, like Limewire or BitTorrent, grew a modest 7.2 percent, reaching 14.9 million, according to figures released by the NPD Group, a market-research firm.
Meanwhile, the number of PC households that used royalty-paying services like iTunes Store shot up 65.8 percent to 12.6 million, meaning such services could soon become the most widely used method of downloading music.
But the average peer-to-peer household still downloads far more songs. Peer-to-peer networks yielded five billion downloads in 2006, whereas 509 million songs were downloaded from iTunes-style services.
The explanation may be, quite simply, that free downloads are easier to gorge on than downloads you have to pay for. But there are other reasons peer-to-peer users download so many songs, said Russ Crupnick, an analyst with NPD. Among them is the declining price and increasing size of hard drives. “When I talk to people who are involved in a lot of peer to peer, they’re running around with external hard drives,” he said.
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ME NEITHER! ( I think that was a Brad Paisley song) I will never use the paid services until they get resonable in price and take off the DRM.
“Meanwhile the number of PC households that used royalty-paying services like iTunes Store shot up 65.8 percent to 12.6 million…” All I can say is: I am not one of them…