Forty three per cent of music downloaders say that free downloads have encouraged them to buy more music than they did; only 35% believe that illegal downloading or file sharing is wrong.
While they might not have as much time for US rappers any more, followers of American hip-hop will have seen a Stateside parallel to the UK scene, with names such as Wiz Khalifa, Yelawolf, Nipsey Hussle, J Cole and Wacka Flocka Flame (who Giggs recently teamed up with on free download Gangster Hop) becoming popular among downloaders.
The top two sites for downloading music are iTunes and Limewire, and half of music downloaders do not pay for any music that they download.
The Doctor Who bundle's success will depend, then, not on how many downloads it gets, but on how many of those downloaders stump up the $12 to unlock it.
Paid digital downloads barely took hold in Sweden, as by the time iTunes arrived downloaders were already using The Pirate Bay.
Meanwhile, music industry analyst Mark Mulligan of Midia Research published a report in August claiming that 30% of consumers are now streaming music; that 23% of those people used to buy more than one album a month but no longer do so; and that 45% of all music downloaders are also now music streamers.
Ultimately, many critics of the music business claim that its problems stem from an inability to produce a product that consumers want to buy, and that most illegal downloaders will flatly refuse to pay for unappetisingly packaged songs and films that they previously got for free.
I suggest that a reduction in music piracy is not, in fact, due to "smarter" or "harsher" policing, but because most downloaders have filled their boots by now.
Since then, the industry has ramped up action against file-sharing and widened its attack by going after individual downloaders as well.At present, some 8,000 individuals around the world face lawsuits for illegal file-sharing.
A controversial new law which cuts off internet access for illegal downloaders demonstrates the established media's lobbying power.Although French entrepreneurs have started many successful young internet firms, most tend to be local rather than pan-European.
They say that blocking entire websites via their domain name smacks of censorship, and that determined downloaders will anyway find the block easy to bypass.Two mighty coalitions have formed around SOPA. Supporting the bill are not only film studios and music labels, but also drug firms and other manufacturers.
