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Number of Napster users soars
NEW YORK
Wednesday 13 September 2000
The number of users of the Napster Internet musicswapping service has soared over the past few months despite a pending lawsuit that could effectively shut down the Web site, according to a survey released yesterday.
Media Metrix said the number of Napster users jumped from 1.1 million in February to 4.9 million in July, a 345 per cent increase.
The market research group said the controversial music filesharing service now ranked as the 43rd most popular home application, attracting more than six per cent of US home PC users with a modem.
The survey also found that Napster users in the workplace more than doubled from 417,000 users in May the first month Napster had reportable traffic at work to nearly 887,000 US users in July.
Bruce Ryon, a senior vice president at Media Metrix, said: “While Napster has not yet gained widespread popularity similar to other musicrelated applications such as multimedia players, it is proving to be a seminal application capable of rapid growth and influence on the sharing and distribution of music files.”
The Recording Industry Association of America has sued Napster, claiming it is simply a service to allow piracy of copyrighted material.
A federal judge issued an injunction in the case in July that would effectively shut down Napster, but that is on hold pending the appeal.
AFP
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