Napster was good for record sales all along

Worldwide music sales were higher when Napster was at its peak than they are now that the controversial mp3 swapping site has been brought to heal by the four big music companies.

According to a recent report from music sales monitor SoundScan, album sales were worth $354.9m in the second quarter of last year - around the time of Napster's peak. This year, however, the figure was down to $344.8m - a fall of three per cent.

The findings seem to contradict the music companies who insisted Napster was damaging their sales - in fact it may have had quite the opposite effect and the music industry may well have shot itself in the foot by pushing for the closure of the service.

It appears users previously downloaded free music to check out tunes, but actually still went out to buy them if they liked what they heard.

Napster who once boasted 17 million users, is currently trying to re-launch itself as a subscription service that guarantees copyright protection.