July 20, 2001 / News Archives
Napster Alternatives On The Rise
By Michael Singer
Is it official yet? Has Napster been kicked off the throne as P2P king of music file sharing?
A new report out Friday by Jupiter Media Metrix (Nasdaq: JMXI) seems to give that impression. The report says the total time spent using the Napster file-sharing application plummeted 65 percent among home users in 14 leading wired countries, from 6.3 billion minutes in February 2001.
"Last year Napster became one of the fastest growing software applications Media Metrix ever reported, with its U.S. user base nearly quadrupling within six months of the application's debut into the ratings reports," says Media Metrix president Doug McFarland. "Today, our ratings show a wide scattering of the former Napster audience to various other music file-sharing resources."
The study is a bit of a no-brainer considering the Redwood City-based Internet song-swapping service is currently off-line while it prepares for its summertime subscription launch, but that doesn't mean that Napster won't have to make up for lost ground after it comes back online.
"The grim reality is that Napster's audience is beginning to be fragmented across many services, which will be very difficult, if not impossible, to litigate against in the same way," says vice president and senior analyst Mark Mooradian. "The next generation of underground file sharing services underscores the need for legitimate music providers, and not just the major labels, to act promptly, putting battles over platforms and copyrights behind them as soon as possible."
Ready to take Napster's place seem to be six other file-sharing applications according to the Media Metrix report.
Bodetella, a client designed for the Gnutella network, held steady at around 1.0 million unique users between January 2001 and May. Audiogalaxy, the second most popular file-sharing application, had 978,000 unique visitors in May 2001, up 78 percent from March 2001, the first month it was reportable. Next was Imesh with 474, 000 unique visitors, up 11 percent from April 2001, its first reportable month.
Rounding out the list of Napster alternatives are Web sites like LimeWire, Bearshare and Napigator
