In the time it takes to read this article, several thousands songs will be downloaded from the web.
A US court dealt Napster, the online song-swapping service, a potentially fatal blow this week, but growth in the use of its service and others like it suggests that the phenomenon is here to stay.
Several analysts believe that, while Napster itself may be unable to continue, the "napsterisation" of entertainment has just begun. As evidence they cite the volume of downloads during the company's travails. Since the court first decided that Napster was violating copyright laws last July, its membership base has almost doubled to some 61m users.
Webnoize, an online monitoring group, estimates that 250m songs were downloaded using Napster in the two days before Monday's ruling. Napster's user base has grown beyond students and techies to include middle-aged men downloading copies of no longer available 78rpms and musicians who have no other outlet.
Most of the users in online chatrooms yesterday asked two questions: how long could they continue downloading and what other services could they use.
The answer to the first question is likely to be next week at the earliest, when Judge Marilyn Hall Patel is expected to refine the injunction she issued last year. This was being seized on by users yesterday as evidence of the gap between the internet and the law.
Napster has become one of the fastest growing businesses of all time. Some die-hard fans of free downloads were quick to point to alternatives such as Gnutella, Freenet, Splooge and Toadnode. Lutfam5 boasted on news.com: "Believe me! There are other places to go - I have downloaded over 1,000 MP3s and ripped nearly 200 myself - I have never used Napster!" Gnutella posted a simple statement on its all-white home page which read: "It's all ok."
Research by Webnoize last year suggests consumers will accept a monthly subscription of as much as $15 to download music online. The furore over this week's ruling suggests it may take some time for existing users to accept such a charge, however.
Slamtilt wrote: "Over-priced CD albums and CD singles is [sic] what has driven the popularity of shared music and Napster is a cybersuccess that the music industry should be utilising rather than trying to destroy."
Such comments are unlikely to deter the music industry, or the entertainment business generally, which is closely watching events. Noah Stone, of Artists Against piracy, which represents acts including Bon Jovi and Christina Aguilera, insisted: "Artists' rights must be respected online."
Napster itself, although promising to appeal, is expected to work harder with its partner Bertelsmann, one of the world's largest record labels, to produce a subscription-based service by the middle of this year.
Few in the industry believe things will return to the way they were before an 18-year-old student founded Napster in May 1999. As Nobuyuki Idei, chief executive of Sony, said this year: "The internet is a kind of power shift. Now the consumer has more power than the company."
•Europe's music industry yesterday made a last ditch effort to ensure that song-swapping sites are regulated out of existence this side of the Atlantic with an EU directive extending copyright protection to the internet.
