RSSStudy: iTunes More Popular than P2P
By Ed Oswald | Published June 7, 2005, 11:40 AM
A survey conducted by research firm NPD Group suggests that Apple's iTunes may be more popular than some leading peer-to-peer file sharing networks. According to the survey, iTunes is now neck-and-neck with LimeWire, while beating out other services such as Kazaa and iMesh.
The survey also found that those who use legal music services tend to be over 30 years of age. They are much less likely to download music illegally off of a P2P service than younger users. Four in ten households with Internet access downloaded a song legally during the month of March 2005," NPD said.
"Digital download stores appear to have created a compelling and economically viable alternative to illegal file sharing," Russ Crupnick, president of the NPD Group’s Music and Movies division, said in a statement.
Crupnick said the proof of this was the fact that Napster and the RealPlayer store also joined iTunes in the top ten most used music services - showing that consumers may be cooling to P2P.
According to the survey, iTunes and LimeWire were tied for second behind WinMX, which is used by 2.1 million households according to NPD. The rest of the top 10 were Kazaa, followed by BearShare, Ares Galaxy, Napster, Morpheus, Real Player Store, and iMesh.
Crupnick also said that the reason why legal file sharing services may be doing better is that people have less time to spend looking for a particular song on a P2P service rather than just buying it from a music store. With the libraries of services such as iTunes and Napster growing daily, it becomes less necessary for users to turn to P2P to find a particular song.
However, NPD said its survey was conducted by collecting data from only 40,000 online panelists. And consumers have shown hesitation in admitting to downloading music illegally with the RIAA frequently suing alleged file swappers.
And no mention of the Live Music Archive which hosts a deluge of files in the "lossless" FLAC and SHN formats. This band supported site is free. There is no Metallica or any other artist who sings the RIAA's praises. We don't have to worry about the problems encountered with DRM either.
Why would anybody pay for encoded I-Tunes which work almost exclusively on Apple's software?
Too much attention has been focused on KaZaa and Morpheus for my taste. I won't use any P2P client which throws a registration form in my face either...
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|As with almost all surveys, the statistics are probably true but the "conclusion" is bull$hit. Look at what was actually surveyed. Anyone here still use Kazaa for P2P? These are only a few avenues of p2p, many others exist, so to say "iTunes More Popular than P2P" is simply lying, the data does not prove that.
I heard that there were surveys a while back that showed that ice cream was more popular in the summer, and another survey said that more drowning deaths occurr in the summer than any other season. Does that mean eating ice cream increases the risk of drowning? Obviously not! There is missing data to support that theory, and there's missing data here to simply conclude that since more people use iTunes than use certain specific P2P tools that iTunes are more popular than P2P altogether.
VikingBlade (below), I still think this is good news, and I know many people, 'Christians' specifically who have finally given up P2P and started using iTunes.
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|i would never use any pay music service. I have for years used P2P because it is free. And I will always continue to do so. I just have to ask why anyone would pay for lesser qaulity. Why pay at all is my position. But if you were gonna pay i would want loseless perfect qaulity songs not the 192 bitrates. If you actually pay for it you should at very least get perfection.
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|Isn't this good even if it's wrong? Or do you think it just encourages the RIAA to sue more?
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|Oh come on: the credibility of this survey is idiotic. Questions like:
"Do you download music illegally using P2P?"
followed by "Then, do you use the legal alternative 'iTunes'?"
Would most likely result in the users replying with:
"No, I've never downloaded music illegally."
"Uh, yeah. I use iTunes all the time. It sure beats P2P." (assuming that user can make the comparison from downloading music illegally, aka for free, to paying for it)
It doesn't take a genious these days to make music; all you have to do is mess around with some instruments and sing, if that. Money's a great thing but what's the point if you waste most of your life composing music just for your claim to fame for five minutes in someone elses lives? (actually, probably only 3 minutes average)
Oh, uh... yeah, you expect us to pay for wasting your life? I cbf contemplating downloading half the crap forced down our throats.
***this coming from a user who regards website advertisements as SPAM! yes SPAM! Wasting precious time and bandwidth loading extra crap that organisation assumes we want to see. If I wanted to see it I'd search for it. HowTF are you supposed to efficiently portray information to users when more than half the data loaded on the page is advertisements. Yes, this one included if you substitute image sizes with the text displayed***
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|lets see, survey saiz? *bzzzzzztttt*
pirated songs are shared via many methods, p2p (of which there are MANY choices and you have to add all these together to get an accurate numbering), usenet, ftp as well as direct ripping and sending via instant messaging file transfer and emails, not to mention underground websites.
Then you have services like iTunes and the like.
group 2 users always step up and admit their useage
group 1 users with at least half a brain stay quiet and only the no-brainers say they use.
IMO the survey only counts the "estimates" number of p2p users, which is in itself a flawed figure, and doesnt count the other methods of sharing files. This is nothing but media hype to inflate the desire to increase sales. The truth of the matter is that the smart "song pirates" use any and all means necessary to get what they want and seldom utter a word of their activities to anyone outside a trusted circle of friends.
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|People still use LimeWire/Kazaa/iMesh/...? :o
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|Ive used P2P extensivly since the 'hay-day' of Napster. And I must say, in the last 2-3 years it has become increasingly difficult to actually find new good stuff out on WinMX. I listen to Electronica and Hip-Hop.
In the past month I have decided to become a DJ and it is totally impossible to find the new good tracks out on Filesharing sites.
The online music stores are actually pretty good. beatport.com in particular is really good, all of their tracks are in 320K, and are TOP QUALITY encodes. Some of the other sites use 192K as the standard but offer the tracks in 320k for and extra $0.50,... not bad....
Pretty much from here on out I will be buying all of my 'Electronica' music online and resorting to Filesharing for Hip-Hop....
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|Once again, the so-called Statistics specialists played the dirty tricks again...
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|Ummm...read the survey. Kazaa lost 50% of it's users last quarter of last year, and iMesh, well--
Yep, and no BitTorrent on the list I noticed. Never trust a survey. The survey itself may be accurate, but it never means what people claim it does.
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|Survey:
1) Do you share/download illegal files or do you use iTunes?
Anyone willing to give this information out? Seriously doubt it.
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|I'll admit it. I used iTunes 3 times. Each time, I ran a 'test'. I download a song from iTunes, and off of the UseNet.
Can you guess where the better quality came from?
Until iTunes can match quality with the 'pirates', I'll stick to Cds. I'd be willing to pay more than 99 cents, but the quality sure as hell has to be better than 256kbit AAC.
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