Months after shutting down its file-trading service, Napster has finally been displaced by four new applications that allow users to trade music, movies and software, a new study concludes.
Four new file-sharing systems -- FastTrack, Audiogalaxy, iMesh and Gnutella -- were used to download 3.05 billion files during August, according to research firm Webnoize.
That's more copyrighted material than was ever shared using Napster. At the beginning of this year when it was at the height of its popularity, Napster users traded nearly 3 billion files.
FastTrack, the most popular file-trading application on the Internet with 970 million files on its network, has seen traffic grow 60 percent every month over the course of the year. FastTrack users can trade music, movies and software.
Audiogalaxy is a close second with 910 million files, although that service is limited only to music. IMesh has 640 million files on its network and Gnutella 530 million files.
News source: Wired News
