NPD just released some new figures suggesting that paid musical downloads are catching up to free albeit illegal, peer to peer downloads. This must be sweet music to the ear of the recording industry as services like WinMX and Itunes proliferate.

Go back a few years. You’re sitting in your dorm, surfin’ the net. Everyone told you about Napster and how you could get free music instead of paying $15 or $20 for the new album from Metallica you’ve been jonesin’ for. You’ve got Napster now, you’ve found tons of Metallica material and you start downloading. You do this for weeks and then months.

Then people start telling you it’s illegal. Napster runs into a whole heap of legal problems because people are swapping their favorite tunes and it’s affecting record sales. What? The RIAA goes after Napster. This was the beginning of the P2P wars.

More service popped on the net that allowed file sharing. You could not only swap maybe an Excel file you were working on, but that Led Zepplin 4 album you’re cousin had now is up for grabs. Why go look through the stacks at Disc Jockey’s or Sam Goody’s when you can get this stuff for free.

The problem you run into is that someone owns this rights to this stuff, namely the record companies, the song writers, and the performers of the said music. This is causing them major losses in revenue. They begin to fight. Artists end up on both sides of the argument, Metallica for prosecution, Keith Richards telling the record companies where to go, the sides began lining up. These MP3s were causing lots of problems as the business world struggles to figure out how to deal with this new format.

Then blank CD sales were higher than recorded disks. The RIAA began to take action. Colleges began to block these types of sites. The Naval Academy at Annapolis even destroyed computers of people engaging in this activity. Lawsuits started and even kids who broke the law were facing real problems.

Enter Apple. This silly, yet expensive little device they call and iPod began to pick up steam. It would hold tons of songs and they could give you whatever you wanted for 99 cents a song. Then they got U2 to do their commercials. They became incredibly hip. And the RIAA took notice. Others like WinMX and Limewire began to move up too. What’s happening here? People are paying for music? Why when they could have it for free. The lawsuits don’t matter. What’s BMG gonna do to me? Take my computer? I don’t have the kind of money they’re after, I don’t care.

But wait, this iPod thing is awfully cool. And they have this cool format for me too. This looks hip. Wait Playboy has some images for it? EVEN BETTER. This is too cool. That free was sweet but genuine iTune from Apple of my favorite songs and naked chicks while I scroll through the songs? Too sweet.

The report say teens and tweens are doing the illegal stuff still but 30 somethings are looking at the pay services out of security more than anything. They don’t want to take a chance of getting arrested. But the real point of this is that pop culture has overcome something many felt like was absolutely free. This is a real coup. Congratulations iPodders, you’ve saved the recording industry.

John Stith is a staff writer for webproworld covering technology and business.