[FA Worldmusic] iPod Fans Shun iTunes Store

[ian at menziesmixedmedia.com]

Excerpted from BBC News Report

Despite the success of Apple iTunes, few people stock their iPod with
tracks from the online store, reports a study. The Jupiter Research report
says that, on average, only 20 of the tracks on an iPod are from the
iTunes shop.

Far more important to iPod owners, said the study, was free music ripped
from CDs someone already owned or acquired from file-sharing sites. The
reports authors claimed their findings had profound implications for the
future of the online music market.

They estimate that during 2006 Europeans will spend more than 385 million
euros on digital music - the majority of this spending will be on tracks
from Apples iTunes store.

However, the report into the habits of iPod users reveals that 83% of iPod
owners do not buy digital music regularly. The minority, 17%, buys and
downloads music, usually single tracks, at least once per month.

On average, the study reports, only 5% of the music on an iPod will be
bought from online music stores. The rest will be from CDs the owner of an
MP3 player already has, or tracks they have downloaded from file-sharing
sites.

The report warned against simple characterizations of the music-buying
public that divide people into those that pay and those that infringe. "It
is not instructive to think of portable media player owners or iPod owners
specifically, as homogenous groups," warned the report.

It said: "Digital music buyers do not necessarily stop file-sharing upon
buying."

The importance of "free" to digital music fans should not be
underestimated, warned the report, and should be a factor for newer
digital music firms, such as SpiralFrog, which use an ad-supported model.

Perhaps the only salient characteristic shared by all owners of portable
music players was that they were more likely to buy more music -
especially CDs. "Digital music purchasing has not yet fundamentally
changed the way in which digital music customers buy music," said the
report.