Napster boss says it's still going strong

Napster says it is still going strong despite having 80% of its music blocked.

A court order was made in March forcing the file-sharing website to block access to any copyrighted song.

But research by PC Pitstop shows Napster is still installed on 38% of PCs in the US, according reports.

Napster's boss Hank Barry said: "Even though over 80% of Napster users' files are being blocked at the request of copyright holders, close to eight million people are using Napster each day, with an average of over one million using the service at any given time.

"Napster's recent research continues to show that these people are the music industry's best customers - 40% of Napster users report they have purchased ten or more CDs over the past six months."

However, the PC Pitstop research also found that the number of installations of Napster has dropped by 6% in the past month.

The study says this shows not only are file-swappers moving away from Napster, but that they're also uninstalling it.

Barry has also revealed that so far 85,311 artist names have been blocked from Napster's search index.

More than a million song titles have been blocked and about 27 million files have been blocked from the service's search index.