It is evident from the statistics that money is a huge factor in teens download music instead of buying CDs. Restricted to the allowances provided by their parents, teens may spend up to a week's pocket money to buy a CD. The Internet however, gives them an alternative better in many ways such as price, speed, efficiency and concenience. Thus, many teens, school going and unable to maintain a sustainable income see no reasons that they should waste so much money and effort obtaining something that can be accessed with a click of the mouse instead.

The rise in popularity of mp3 players also contributed to the growth of music downloading. This is due to the fact that when downloading music from the Internet, the music is already in mp3 format. There is no need to, go through the hassle of ripping out the contents, then converting the music into mp3 format. mp3 players are more portable and can store tens of thousands more songs than a CD, which typically has about 15 songs. Think of it, would a teen rather get 30,000 songs for free or 15 songs for $30?

A point still hanging in the air is whether music downloading affects record sales. Yes, the decline in CD shipment might have coincided with the invention of KaZaA and Napster, however, there is very little evidence that p2p networks affect record sales at all as previous studies have shown that music downloaders would not even have bought the CDs in the first place. The majority feel that for free, downloading is very worth it, but if they have to pay for downloads, they would not consider it. They would turn to other alternatives to listen to music such as radios or televisions.

What the music industry can do to stop the spread of illegal mp3 files is very limited. Education is one of the most obvious methods. By teaching teens the rules and principles of the copyright and trademark, teens would hopefully realise the grevious wrongdoings that many are committing now. I personally feel that fines would not have much of an impact as the parents are the ones paying, and thus the teens would not feel the pain or pinch of getting punished.