The music industry's controversial lawsuits against online song swappers appear to have forced U.S. computer users to severely curb their free music downloading habit, according to new research released Sunday.

The percentage of Americans who downloaded music from the Internet fell to 14 percent over the four weeks ended Dec. 14, from 29 percent in a 30-day sample conducted in March, April and May, according to a telephone survey of 1,358 Internet users conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Read more: CNN.

the question is will album sales rise accordingly... i think not. i'm keeping a close eye on this as it concerns my senior thesis... i think the online ventures will suck up any sales that would result from this decrease in downloading.

And.......do you REALLY think people are going to be honest in a blind phone poll when asked if they download music via P2P? I don't think so. Methinks this company has bad data.

You know.... I actually bought a couple of albums recently for the first time in years. And I think I might buy more. But it would have to be a sweet album, and I would really want to support the artist in doing so.

alternate methods will keep rising, they always do :P

Me too, but not the first time in years, just a long time. Just recently I got A Perfect Circle - Mer De Noms, Tool - Undertow, and AEnima. Old albums, yeah, but they're all sweet. It probably has been about a year since I bought my last album. It's not because of the music subpoenas, since I can't download music anyway (I have 28k).