Music buyers gravitate toward legal downloads: survey
36 minutes ago Add Technology - AFP to My Yahoo!
NEW YORK (AFP) - US music consumers are sharply increasing their interest in legal downloads and diminishing their use of free song-swapping over the Internet, a survey showed.
The survey by the NPD Group found about five percent of those who have purchased music CDs also used a legal Internet service to purchase music in the first quarter of 2004, or triple the percentage in the same period a year ago.
Among music buyers who purchased both CDs and a song download from a legal service, the likelihood that they also downloaded a song illegally fell dramatically, from 64 percent last year to 42 percent in 2004, the survey found.
The surge in use of legitimate online music services comes as a growing number of companies have set up sites with song downloads for roughly one dollar. At the same time, the music industry has been cracking down on file-swapping with lawsuits alleging copyright infringement.
"Paid services like (Apple's) iTunes and (RealNetworks') Rhapsody appear to be attracting core music buyers, which can create a firm foundation for legal digital music purchases," said Russ Crupnick, president of NPD Music.
"To date, NPD data shows that there has been a small reduction in sales of CDs; however, that decline might be offset by the overall value of the digital customer and the downturn in illegal file sharing."
Consumers who downloaded from a legal service or became paid members of subscription services showed only a small reduction in the number of CDs that they purchased at retail. The average consumer who paid for digital music as well as CDs purchased less than one fewer CD in 2003 compared to 2002, the survey found.
"Our research shows that it's the people who are really into music that are beginning to adopt paid digital services as an additional way of acquiring and enjoying music, and so far these services are living side by side with traditional CDs," Crupnick said.
"As the industry matures and digital music becomes even more main stream, it remains to be seen just how much paid digital music will affect the market for CDs."
