Federico 's Public Library

The question arises,
though: does the fact that music will be released with little
or no chance of monetary gain drive away
musicians who might wish to make their living on their art?

“Not so far, though I’ve only been doing it for
8 months or so,” said Adrian of Sydney, Australia’s
4-4-2 Music. “But I don’t imagine the well will dry
up too quickly when you take into consideration the fact that
the
globe is opened up to connect with. I have noticed that it’s
electronic-based producers who seem more willing to release music
for free though, probably due to low production costs while maintaining
high production standards.”

While it is true that the bulk
of the music offered through netlabels is from electronic musicians,
the bedroom producer nature of
the genre has allowed a wide range of experimental music to
be offered to a vast audience. The ready availability of this
music
to anyone with an Internet connection gives curious listeners
the chance to explore music they may have never heard otherwise.

There are now more than 100 million web sites on the Internet, which gained 3.5 million sites last month to continue the dynamic growth seen throughout 2006. In the November 2006 survey we received responses from 101,435,253 sites, up from 97.9 million sites last month.

The 100 million site milestone caps an extraordinary year in which the Internet has already added 27.4 million sites, easily topping the previous full-year growth record of 17 million from 2005. The Internet has doubled in size since May 2004, when the survey hit 50 million.

Big Champagne reports that in September the average number of people logged onto p2p networks worldwide was 9,284,558. In September 2003 the figure was 4,319,182. Moreover the increase in the number of users since the 2004 figure of 6,784,574 suggest that there is no slowing in the rate of growth.