Trying to make a case against digital music downloading and burning, RIAA also reported that its own survey of music buyers showed "...over 50 percent of those music fans that have downloaded music for free have made copies of it. Just two years ago, only 13 percent copied it onto a portable device or a CD burner." They also report that in 2001 40% of all "music consumers" owned a CD burner compared to 14% in 1999. (This matches Forrester's 45% number from mid-2002.) They say that "23 percent of those music consumers surveyed said that they did not buy more music in 2001 because they downloaded or copied most of their music for free". It is unclear if those people didn't buy any music, or just didn't buy more than they did (but since they call them "consumers" and not "fans" they imply that those people do buy), nor whether the other 17% who have burners said they bought more. (Bernoff's say this is the case: "...while 13% [of Digital Music Lovers] say downloading will decrease their music purchases, 39% say exposure to new music online increases their CD buys.") In any case, it is clear that those people that download and burn music generally still buy a lot of music when they could have gotten it "for free". In fact, they still buy most of all music.

If downloading invariably led to a cessation of buying, as RIAA implies, music sales would be off by a much, much larger amount....