March 15, 2001 – Napster users are sharing nearly 60% fewer digital music files since the company began an effort to filter recordings owned by plaintiffs in a copyright case against it, according to research by Webnoize. Prior to implementing a filtering effort at approximately 9PM (ET) yesterday, Napster users shared an average of 172 song files each. With the filter in place the number of songs made available for sharing fell to 71 per user, a drop of 59%. "Napster is successfully filtering many songs from its system," said Webnoize Analyst Matt Bailey. "It is not just the number of files available that has fallen sharply. The number of downloads per user has dropped by half."

Despite Napster's efforts, plenty of music by top-name acts remains available through the system. The RIAA asked the company to block songs by Alabama, the Beach Boys, Barenaked Ladies, Eminem, Elvis Presley, George Winston, Genesis and Pink Floyd. This morning Webnoize found songs by all of those artists available through Napster; songs by two other artists on the list, 98 Degrees and A Perfect Circle, were available by adding certain characters to a search.

"Further titles will be blocked in the coming days, pushing content available through Napster down further," said Bailey. "Users will quickly migrate to alternative systems." Last week the Recording Industry Association of America said it gave song-swap service Napster a list of 135,000 copyrighted songs. It asked the service to block access to them according to terms laid out in a federal court injunction issued March 5. The injunction gave Napster 72 hours to comply, a deadline that came yesterday.