Napster was shut down by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for copyright infringement, and music services like Morpheus, Grokster, and Kazaa have been tagged by litigators, but the legacy and lifestyle behind downloading pirated music files and sharing them among friends and other music fans continues on at a healthy clip, says market research firm Odyssey.

A semiannual study on the behavior of U.S. music consumers by Odyssey's Breadbox unearthed some surprising findings that might curl the hair on the music industry's head.

San Francisco-based Odyssey points to a healthy increase in online users who admit to having downloaded or transferred music over the past six months. Among the 3,000 nationwide consumers surveyed, 31 percent over the age of 16, a category that represents 40 million music consumers, confessed to downloading or transferring music online an average of 11 times per week.

An interesting upside to Odyssey's study is that the most likely candidates for illegal downloads and file-swapping are also the heaviest consumers of commercially available records, tapes, and CDs.

But while 53 percent of digital music-swappers are typically under 30-years of age, the study indicates an increasing trend among older music consumers toward similar online behavior. According to the data, 20 percent of online users over the age of 30 and 14 percent of those over the age of 45 have downloaded or transferred music files over the past six months.

"With older consumers already getting comfortable with digital music, it would appear that the platform's appeal is not something that this large base of young consumers is likely to outgrow over time," states Odyssey.

These statistics come at a time when music industry is trying to shut down developers of file-sharing technology and protect its bottom line, which at last count has taken a staggering 10 percent decrease in music sales overall, accounting for $33 billion less cash in the RIAA's coffers.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry is calling this sales drop, "the single worst drop in record-business history," coupled with an RIAA announcement that music shipments in the U.S. also plunged 10 percent in 2001 from the previous year.

And while it is impossible to pinpoint one single factor like online music piracy as the sole contributor to this downturn, the online proliferation of digital music files is most likely a major influence, states Odyssey.

Breadbox data makes a strong case for the desire of the online music consumer to own, control, and customize their music collections, a demand that record labels have been slow, some say too slow, to meet.

"The (music) industry has taken so long to respond that an entirely new set of expectations has been created," said Odyssey's President and CEO Nick Donatiello. "Now record labels will have to climb walls that they are allowing to be built."

The industry has tried filling this need by investing in and licensing content to music subscription services like MusicNet, Pressplay, and Listen.com, but choices are limited, which would appear to be converse to what digital music fans are asking for. They want freedom, choices, and more choices.

Statistics also point to a marked increase of U.S households that own recordable CD-ROM drives and use them to copy songs from a CD or other sources to their hard drives, or to record their own music CDs by copying music onto blank CDs.

Odyssey's survey suggests that 60 percent of those polled would be interested in subscribing to a music service, unlike those that currently exist, that enable them to create their own play lists and burn them onto the format "most suitable to their lifestyle."

"Today's digital music services were meant to solve the industry's problems, not meet the consumer's needs," said Sean Baenen, Odyssey's managing director. "They would have been better off waiting to get their house in order than opening their doors and sending a message that they are not in touch with why people use digital music."

In addition to its data-gathering service Breadbox, Odyssey produces Homefront, a biannual survey on PC usage, online services, video game consoles, and other home and media products and services.