14 DAY TRIAL // Marketing research company Ipsos Insigh has made public a recent study according to which the volume of pirated music on portable music players is down to a percentage considerably inferior to that of the licensed songs. The decrease only indicates a rising trend of the legal downloads compared to those from unauthorized sources. The context refers in particular to a loss of popularity of peer-to-peer downloads.
More than 1.100 people have been subjects to the study. The data indicates that most of the music on portable music players originates with the user's already existing CD collection, amounting to a percentage of over 44 percent. Another 25% refers to music that has been legally downloaded over the Internet and only 19% comes from illicit file sharing. It also seems that more than 6 percent of the music accounts for ripped CDs, which provides another legal issue for the record houses to deal with.
The conclusions of the study are that approximately 175 songs on each portable music player have illicit sources and are used without a license. But it still is a step forward in the fight against piracy as each player can hold up to 700 songs.