What is peer-to-peer downloading all about?

This is probably one of the most interesting articles I've read so far about illegal music downloading. Some extracts:

"There's a really significant population who are downloading hundreds of songs a month - more than you could listen to if all you did is listen to them," says Garland, whose online media metrics company was among the first to chart the popularity of illegal downloads. "Are these people who are feeding at the all-you-can eat buffet of free music greedy? The answer, by the numbers, is absolutely. They eat till they make themselves sick. People hoard music that they never even listen to."

As well as the star system, illegal downloading discourages another strategy from the CD era that was designed to maximize record companies' profits by reaching deeper into customers' pockets: the packaging of songs into albums. Economists refer to this kind of sales strategy as "bundling."

The result? "Oh my God, they minted money," Garland says. "The torrential downpour of cash from the late '80s through the middle '90s was unprecedented. If you talk to the executives and the artists who were there during this gold rush and they talk about it like Camelot, as a time when all you had to do was show up in the morning and you got rich." Full story...

Read also this, this and this...