“According to ratings firm Media Metrix, more people visited
Napster.com last week than they did Amazon.com, long one of the
best-known brands on the Web.”
“Yet experts aren’t sure what that surge in popularity means.
Napster and other programs like Gnutella and Scour Exchange are
downloaded from the Web but don’t actually use the Web to trade
files. Thus, Web site traffic numbers don’t paint an adequate
picture of how many people are actually using the software
downloaded from individual sites….”
“The record companies have kind of blown it,” said Malcom
Maclachlan, an analyst with International Data Corp. “They’ve
completely lost the ability to train music listeners into the kind
of online consumption patterns that would be beneficial to
them.“