Napster Numbers Are Falling, Study Says

A new study found a sharp decline in the number of consumers using Napster Inc., the embattled online song-swapping service.

Napster now has 320,000 simultaneous users, down from an average of 1.57 million in February, according to Webnoize, a research firm specializing in digital entertainment. The number of songs offered for sharing has plummeted to an average of 1.5 per person, down from 220 in February, the study said. Analyst Matt Bailey blamed the slide on the increasingly effective restrictions that Napster had imposed to stop copyright violations, in compliance with a federal.