Music downloads have gone mainstream.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

Somewhere in the executive suites of the major music labels, there are probably a few hidebound individuals who still dismiss the MP3 phenomenon as a fringe pursuit enjoyed by a small community of wired-to-the-hilt college students. And there are a lot of music-industry execs clinging to an equally fanciful notion _ that some technological silver bullet is going to come along tomorrow, wipe out Napster and make the whole MP3 nightmare go away.

These people are in denial. And it can't last much longer.

Last week, the Pew Internet and American Life Project released a study that shows with reasonable certainty that Internet music downloading is now a mainstream practice, particularly among young Net users. The study, based on two surveys of more than 4,000 individuals, indicates the downloading phenomenon continues to mushroom _ despite the severe curtailment of copyrighted files available via Napster.

According to Pew, almost 30 million American adults _ 29 percent of all adult Net users _ have downloaded music files. The numbers for users under 30 are even more dramatic. Fifty-three percent of Net users ages 12 to 17 and 51 percent of those 18 to 29 have downloaded music. The only people not jumping on the MP3 bandwagon in remarkable numbers are those older than 50, just 15 percent of whom download songs.

Age was the only stark demographic demarcation the study turned up. In the past six months the legion of people collecting MP3s has swelled 40 percent. That growth cut across all racial and economic lines and included Internet newcomers and veterans alike.

The Pew report also showed Napster's ongoing legal saga is having a quantifiable effect on the number of songs available on the service. According to Pew, a year ago the average Napster user had about 100 song files available for swapping. In July of last year that rose to between 120 and 130 songs. And by January the average number of files was between 180 and 200. Now that the federal court has ordered Napster to block the exchange of copyrighted files, the number is 70 to 80.

It's unclear to what extent the labels are harmed by free downloads of their copyrighted material. Sixty-nine percent of downloaders say they've eventually gone out and bought at least some of the music they'd downloaded.