Paying Music Downloaders Double in 6 Months

While the RIAA pursues its high-profile lawsuits against filesharers, more and more Americans are paying for digital music downloads for use on portable audio devices, according to TEMPO, Ipsos-Insight's quarterly study of digital music behaviours. The number paying a fee to download music or MP3 files from the Internet has roughly doubled in just 6 months.

In late June of 2003 roughly one out of six (16%) American downloaders aged 12 and older had paid a fee to download music or MP3 files off of the Internet - equivalent to around 10m Americans. The figure was 8% in December 2002 and 13% in April 2003, which indicates 'a remarkable shift in downloader behavior' according to Matt Kleinschmit, Director for Ipsos-Insight, and author of the TEMPO research.

Whilst young adults aged 18 to 24 are predictably the most likely to have paid to download digital music (22%), older downloaders are also trying out fee-based digital music acquisition. 19% of downloaders between the ages of 25 and 54 have paid for a music or MP3 download, while downloaders aged 12 to 17 were the least likely to have done so.
According to Kleinschmit, 'This is significant in that these data were collected in late June, prior to the recent release of multiple Windows-based online music services. It will be interesting to see how these refined fee-based online music services impact this figure in futures waves of TEMPO, and whether downloaders' dependence on peer-to-peer filesharing decreases accordingly'.

Ipsos-Insight also found that nearly one-fifth (19%) of US downloaders own a Portable Digital Audio Player/ Portable MP3 Player, up from just 12% in December of 2002. Kleinschmitt says that digital music enthusiasts 'may be shifting their overall music acquisition and listening behaviours from a physical to a digital approach - this should be a positive sign for associated industries, in that legitimate market opportunities are increasingly prevalent in the world of digital music, even alongside unauthorized peer-to-peer filesharing'.

'TEMPO: Keeping Pace with Digital Music Behavior' is a quarterly shared-cost research study. Data for this release were collected between June 27th and 30th, 2003, via a nationally representative US sample of 1,112 respondents aged 12 and over.

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

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