Reports of Napster's demise are greatly exaggerated, according the company's chief executive officer in response to research reports showing sharp declines in usage as the song-swap service struggles to filter out copyrighted songs from its service to comply with a federal court order.
"The most striking fact in the latest Webnoize study is the high number of music consumers who remain loyal to file sharing," said Napster chief executive officer Mr Hank Barry, referring to a report from the technology research firm.
Webnoize this week reported the number of songs swapped on Napster fell by more than a third, down 36 per cent, in April from March as its court-ordered filters blocked more pirated files.
Nevertheless, over a billion files were still traded in April and Napster still draws millions of people each day.
The number of files traded on the Napster service has steadily declined, from a peak of 2.79 billion in February to 2.49 billion in March and 1.59 billion in April, Webnoize said.
Even though over 80 per cent of Napster users' files are being blocked at the request of copyright holders, close to 8 million people are using Napster each day with an average of over 1 million using the service at any given time, Mr Barry said.