According to BBM Media, seven million Canadians have downloaded music files from the Internet. While most people believe it's younger people doing most of the downloading, the most active group are 25-to-34-year-olds. The "good" news for the music industry is that downloaders spend $64 a year on CDs, compared with $51 for the general population. As much as the Canadian music industry complains about how much money they are currently losing, there is a legitimate argument to be made that downloading is legal in Canada. Until there are changes to the copyright laws and the elimination or massive scale-back of the media levy, most people are not doing anything illegal.
The media levy, by the way, doesn't help the music industry because it makes consumers pay a tax on everything from digital memory used in cameras to computer hard drives and blank CD-ROMs. Speaking of music downloading, does it seem strange that Puretracks - Canada's home-grown music downloading service - has been strangely quiet recently. You would think with iTunes launch into Canada recently, Puretracks would be more vocal.