COPYCENSE

The Pew Internet & American Life Project released a report Sunday that suggests that the future of music distribution is through online means.

"The number of those who say they download music online remains well below the peak levels that we tracked in the spring of 2003, but there was some growth in those who reported music downloading in our February survey. The data also shows growth since last November in usage of some of the smaller file-sharing applications, such as iMesh, BitTorrent, and eMule.

In the most recent survey, we found that 18% of Internet users said they download music files. That is a modest increase from the 14% of Internet users who reported in a survey just before last Christmas that they downloaded music files online. But it is still considerably below the 29% who said they had done this when we surveyed in the spring of 2003."

Pew Internet & American Life Project. 14% of Internet Users Say They No Longer Download Music Files. April 25, 2004.

David McGuire. Americans Head Back Online For Music. The Washington Post. April 25, 2004.