Competing P2P Clients Usage Rose after LimeWire’s Demise

After ten long years of providing service to its users, LimeWire succumbed to the brute force of the record industry and closed shop. As the saying goes, though, once one goes down, ten more pop up, and that couldn’t be more true. If people pirate, they are not going to suddenly begin not pirating, and that’s something the record industry, among others, fail to understand.

It’s for that reason that it was expected that competitor applications would soak up the spill and increase their userbase, and sure enough, that’s just what’s happened. According to TorrentFreak, numerous P2P clients saw major gains in overall downloads as a direct result of LimeWire being shut down, which of course proves that the RIAA is just wasting its time when it comes to these things.

I am of course not condoning piracy in any way, but I’m also a realist and see why people do pirate music, movies and so forth. The industry is clueless when it comes to pricing and marketing, and at this point in time, no one really wants to pay $30 for a movie or even $15 for a CD. iTunes is clear proof of that, where you seem to get a lot more value when buying music than you would elsewhere.

But, at the same time, I’m also impressed to see a staggering 800% increase in downloads for the legal BearShare client, which occurred exactly a day after LimeWire’s demise. What that equates to in real numbers or revenue is another thing, though.

MP3Rocket did tell TorrentFreak that they saw a “nice increase in downloads” following LimeWire’s shutdown, but at the same time they say their client will leave the Gnutella network before the end of the year. Worried about the effects of upcoming legislation and the LimeWire verdict, MP3Rocket will re-brand itself as a YouTube video to MP3 downloading client in the coming weeks.