Napster Tones Down the Downloads

Baldwin Louie — Tue, 01 May 2001 15:00:00 -0700

In Napster's first full month of blocking music to satisfy a court injunction, the number of songs downloaded through its file-swapping service dropped by more than one-third, according to a report released Tuesday by online music research firm Webnoize.

In April, Napster users downloaded 1.59 billion songs, down 36 percent from 2.49 billion songs in March and 43 percent from a February peak of 2.79 billion.

The number of songs available for download per user dropped even more significantly. An average of 37 files were available per user in April, half the 74 files available in March. That's an 83 percent drop from the 220 files available per user at Napster's peak at the beginning of March.

Napster began blocking music in response to a court injunction issued March 5 by U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel. The recording industry sued Napster in December 1999, charging the Redwood City, Calif.-based startup with copyright infringement. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit directed Patel to issue the injunction, and now Napster is awaiting a decision from the appellate court on its request to rehear its case. By the end of April, Napster reported that it was blocking access to 1.75 million track names or name variants. Napster is currently blocking an average of 1.6 billion files per day.

Napster declined to comment on the Webnoize report.

Matt Oppenheim, senior VP for business and legal affairs at the Recording Industry Association of America, said Webnoize's findings do little to appease the major record labels' dissatisfaction with Napster's efforts to comply with the injunction. He notes that the system carries multiple files for the same song, so that a reduction in available files does not necessarily mean that Napster has completely blocked a protected work.

"We are, of course, pleased to see that Napster is attempting to filter the recordings," Oppenheim said. "But this statistical analysis does not assist in determining whether they are being effective or not. It is still our view that most of the recordings are still available on Napster and that this is contrary to the court's order."

As the number of available files on Napster has plummeted, however, users have started to flee the system. In April, an average of 1.05 million users simultaneously logged on to the system, down 17 percent from March and 32 percent from February. Matt Bailey, a senior analyst with Cambridge, Mass.-based Webnoize, said it was surprising that more people didn't abandon Napster, given that so much music is being blocked.

"Part of the reason is there aren't really credible alternatives," he said. "A lot of [alternatives] have struggled to handle significant traffic."

Still, Napster users appear to be becoming increasingly disillusioned with the system as music fades away. "Why restrict sharing? Why not 'fight' and make the feds come and shut down the servers for themselves?" a user with the name MrTrips asked on Napster's message board. "Napster in effect, has castrated itself."

Yet others are clearly sticking with the service. Another user with the name Bellybutton points out that there's still "great music available ... like Bach, Brahms, Puccini, Verdi, Lizst, Bee Rossini, Scarlati, Chopin, Debussy to name a few. Check some of it out."

The Industry Standard - Napster Tones Down the Downloads - Comments

Napster Tones Down the Downloads