SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The music industry's controversial lawsuits against online song swappers appear to have forced U.S. computer users to severely curb their free music downloading habit, according to new research released on Sunday (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=582&e=3&u=/nm/20040104/wr_nm/tech_music_dc)

The real question to ask is whether CD sales went up. Sigh. :-?

Hrm... I've stopped downloading because it's harder to find good music. :)

The same thing that happened with any new medium happened to MP3s, only faster.

People used to buy a lot of CDs when they were new, buying new, replacing LPs, etc. Now that CDs are old hat, sales are slipping.

Same for MP3s. Everybody did all the "good" downloads and now their players are "full" of plenty of music. Don't need as many downloads now just to "keep up".

I bet if you tracked the overall spending on "entertainment", though that number is still going up - witness DVDs.

The article is about "Reported" downloading not downloading....put 2 and 2 together ..... :wink:

I haven't downloaded a song for ages, but it has nothing to do with the RIAA. Part of the reason is that the 'thrill' is gone. Another part is that I've already downloaded most of the 'backlist' stuff I wanted. The biggest part might just be that there hasn't been anything worth downloading in a while! I've only bought 2 CDs in the last few months, simply due to lack of interest.

Which brings me an almost completely unrelated rant :) One of those CDs I bought was the new Nelly Furtado disc. It's horrible! The lyrics are totally devoid of intelligence, the production is far too 'rich', as compared to her last CD, and finally, if she wants to sing in Portuguese, she should release a Portuguese album. Most of the songs are English with Portuguese words thrown in here and there and since I don't know Portuguese, I don't have a clue what the point is!

You have to be a country music fan and then there is lots
of good stuff to download. :wink:
I just found about 600MB of old files to delete, so now I have
some space and can download a couple I just heard recently.

Free music on the net ??? Really ?

I must have been 'Napping' :) .

It's just to see if you really like the song.
Then you go and buy the CD. Right?

Ok... So song downloading is apparently on the decrease. That doesn't mean people are buying more. So I wonder if there's really a victory here since we all know it's about money, not real intellectual property protection. :)

As for me, there's nothing good for me worth downloading.

Harmer, for my part, I might download the first and maybe the second single off a new album, but if I really like them, or the a 3rd single sounds great too, I'll definitely buy the album. Then there's stuff like Kid Rock, for example. I like his singles and enjoy having them "in the mix", but I don't think I could stand listening to an entire album of that type of music.

Actually, that reminds me that a friend of mine actually bought the last Kid Rock album because he liked his songs on the mix I played at the cottage over the summer (downloaded songs). Works both ways!