The Great Migration Away From LimeWire Begins
LimeWire has been ordered to shut down. The RIAA will now seek damages upwards of $1 billion. They estimate that LimeWire costs the record labels $500 million in lost music sales every month. From Download.com alone, LimeWire has been downloaded around 206,881,874 times.
This news leaves the more than 50 million monthly users of the client looking for new ways to consume music. Some will migrate to iTunes and Amazon, buying music legally, while others are likely to begin the search for new methods.
Such tools include BitComet, FrostWire, BitTorrent, uTorrent, and others, as well as, private hubs and Usenet. All of which may see boosts in usage due to the migration of users. The outcome, however, will not result in the record industry getting much of its estimated $500 million back. Consumer awareness and usage of sites like MOG and Rdio are not high enough for users to relocate to them.
Where do you think 50 million people will go? Will music sales of any kind increase because of this news? Or will nothing change at all?
The RIAA is no doubt hiring the same mathematicians and economists that created the Internet but some years back.. You know the same morons that estimated that the AOL Time Warner merger made perfect sense on paper.
This from the folks that told us, and I was in the room, that they had the whole digital downloading thing under control and that they needed no help from the technology side or congress.
This time I’m sure they got it right!
I am thinking that 24 hours from the official shut down 500 million dollars will now come pouring into the artists’ pockets, I am already buying my second home in anticipation of my commission checks anyone have a bridge to sell me?