When was the last time he bought a music CD? "I used to buy them before, but now I just buy blanks because they're cheaper and I burn mp3s, movies and music videos on them."

If most kids were like Amit, they'd give record execs sleepless nights. It could result in a ruined market, no way for anyone to make money from selling CDs, and the end of pop music as we know it. But while you're always going to have the unethical geek who downloads mp3s and listens only to music on his PC, he's not quite the average person who samples music on the Net.

Take the current court rulings that allow the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to use DOS (denial of service) attacks against P2P (Peer to Peer) services, copy protected mp3-proof CDs, the large scale spoofing and spamming funded by the music industry, the constant shutting down of P2P services, bandwidth limitations and the time and effort to download an mp3, and you might realise that it takes the most dedicated mind to download an entire album these days.

The Three Song Rule

"I had an unspoken rule; unless there were at least three decent songs on an album, I wouldn't consider spending money on it, because most musicians couldn't keep up being halfway-decent for 50 minutes at a stretch," says music buff Pratik, "But when I got Napster, I actually began buying CDs again, because I could preview my potential purchases with mp3s. My fear of being saddled with a mediocre CD disappeared."

For most people, mp3s serve as a sample, a teaser or advertisement that helps them make informed decisions. Says Cidrick, "Ironically, I've bought around eight times as many CDs than I had before I started collecting mp3s. Mostly because I had been fooled often by bands that had one good song on the radio and the rest of their album sucked. Then I found mp3s and listened to albums before I bought them."

Andre Rodrigues, an avid trip-hop and Drum and Bass fan has a huge collection of mp3s, but regularly buys CDs of music he particularly likes. "Mp3s are a great way to sample music. You download and check it out and if you like it you run to the store and pick up a CD. I like buying the material because it's a way of showing them my respect. The bad thing about India is you don't get stuff here. There are countless Britney Spears and boyband CDs as they are the easiest to market here. But what about something like Pearl Jams' 'No Code' or their other rare stuff? People haven't even heard of Portishead. And that sucks. Mp3s are the best thing to have around when the music moguls aren't listening to my tastes and just going with what the lowest common denominator wants."

Regional music is also pirated online. Murali Mohan downloaded the songs from Baba, Rajnikant's latest Opus, a week before its release and spread it on his company BBS in Chennai. His popularity has risen quite sharply since. A number of sites have Telugu, Bhojpuri and Carnatic music.

Rajiv Balakrishnan supports the idea that mp3s help listeners discover new genres, but believes that original CDs are special: "There's the whole 'superior sound quality' thing; the artwork and lyrics are a big deal, and most of the stuff I buy has a collector's value."

Manowar feels mp3s are a means to let artists to reach beyond geographical constraints. He believes they do affect record sales but that listeners must respect the artist they like. "I can understand when an artist or album is rare, and you have no option but to download it. Heck, official sites from bands and artists release promo singles online to endorse their music. But if you like an album, and it's in the market I think it deserves your money. If you see no reason for buying an original CD then you have no right to complain when a band breaks up or good music just stops coming to our third world market."

Ultimately, music also makes an emotional connection with the listener, who ends up patronising the artist. Says Pratik, "The bands and musicians I listen to (and discovered via Napster and Kazaa) almost never shoot blanks. I'm only too happy to give them my money."

Music, Medium, Mode

How do mp3s affect the record industry? Without getting too boring or historic, mp3 is basically a compression code that gives high quality sound at 1/10 the size. Any user can download them via P2P services, and while a standard music CD can have a maximum of 18 songs you can cram in 200 high quality mp3s.

It's not that everyone with a Net connection and soundcard is a music pirate. For, while CD burners allow anyone to burn and make copies, the means to duplicate and reproduce music have always existed, even with tape decks. Maybe it's the connection between three previously unavailable technologies - mp3s, CD burners and the Internet -- that has created cause for concern. However, going by global trends, statistics are largely inconclusive as to whether there has been a definable drop in CD sales.

• The RIAA considers illegal music downloads to be the chief cause of a 10 per cent drop in sales in the US in 2001. However, the UK's CD market bucked the downward global trend and enjoyed a bumper year, with sales increasing by more than five per cent in 2001.
  
  
• Studies by Jupiter Media Metrix indicate that Internet file-sharing traffic actually increases music sales. 34 per cent of P2P file-sharing users said they spend more money on music than before, while 15 per cent said they purchased less.
  
  
Global sales of recorded music fell by five per cent last year to £23.4bn, as per the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).