Digital Music: Volume Turned Up

2003 saw the arrival in the mainstream of fee-based digital music services and a nearly threefold increase in paid downloading, according to TEMPO, Ipsos-Insight's quarterly tracker of American digital music behavior.

In December 2003 as many as 22% of American downloaders aged 12 and older had paid a fee to download digital music off of the Internet, whereas a year previously the figure was only 8%. This translates into an estimated 10 million experienced fee-based downloaders within the current US population (according to 2000 U.S. Census figures).

Matt Kleinschmit, Director for Ipsos-Insight's Technology & Communications practice, and author of the Tempo tracking research study, points to the role played by both carrot and stick: the launch of several new consumer-friendly fee-based online music services, and high-profile litigation by the RIAA towards high-volume individual file-sharers. 'The next order of business for fee-based online music services is both to continue to lure new consumers to their respective services, and retain users who may be visiting for experimentation purposes only'.

A complementary in-depth TEMPO study revealed that most of the rise in paid downloading is due to the 25 to 54 age group. The younger end of this group is no more likely to be downloading than the older - 25% of 25 to 34 year olds and 26% of 35 to 54 year olds have paid to download. There is still a significant gender gap in terms of overall downloading, but male and female downloaders are about equally likely to have paid to download digital music off of the Internet (21% and 18%, respectively, in the in-depth study).

More than three-fifths (62%) of American downloaders who have paid to download digital music are burning the files onto recordable compact discs, and making an average of two separate copies of the digital music they have purchased online. More than half (56%) added the files to a custom playlist, while one-quarter (26%) transferred the music to a portable MP3 player.

Says Kleinschmit: 'while these downloaders do appear to require the ability to burn files and transfer music to portable devices at their leisure, it is interesting that few of these consumers are doing so in excess. Given the relatively adolescent stage of consumer experimentation with these services, it will be important to closely monitor fee-based digital music file usage activity in order to anticipate the impact of any modified usage limitations on user satisfaction and retention'.

TEMPO: Keeping Pace with Digital Music Behavior is a quarterly shared-cost research study by Ipsos-Insight examining the ongoing influence and effects of digital music around the world. Quant data were collected between December 12 and 15, 2003, from 1,112 US respondents aged 12 and over. Data for the in-depth examination were collected between December 22, 2003 and January 7, 2004 from 700 downloaders aged 12 and over.

More information about the methodology of TEMPO is available at www.ipsos-insight.com/tempo.cfm

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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