Music Ally

Research firm Music Matters presented the findings from its latest survey of global music consumption at MidemNet this morning, with president Jasper Donat taking the stage.

The research was based on 8,500 interviews in 13 countries in November last year. The good news? 63% of people surveyed claimed to be passionate about music – that’s an average, it’s over 80% in Spain, Brazil and the UK. What country scored the lowest? Australia.

14% of surveyees would listen to music every minute of the day if they could – a proportion which rose to 49% in Brazil.

In terms of legal use, 21% of people globally streamed music directly from a service like MySpace or Spotify in the last month, although 29% said they’d downloaded a song illegally. China was the naughtiest – 68% – followed by South Korea with 60%.

30% of respondents bought a CD in a store in the month leading up to the survey, while 11% bought one online. 11% bought a bootleg, counterfeit or pirate CD – that’s how many admitted to it anyway.

Donat also talked about music video. 57% of respondents watched one on TV, 46% on a computer and 17% on a mobile. The under-35s are driving the TV viewing, strangely – 64% of them had watched a music video on TV in the last month.

Mobile music videos are most popular in India – 38% of respondents there had watched a video on their phone in the last month.

Donat also talked about ancillary revenues. “It hasn’t really started to take off,” he said. 16% had bought a live tour DVD in the last year, 16% had bought ringtones or wallpaper, 11% had bought an artist t-shirt or other clothing.

Advertising? 45% said they would be happy to view or listen to advertising to download music, while 41% said the same for streaming music – figures which rise to over 70% in South Korea.

However, privacy matters – only 25% would be willing to provide personal information in exchange for free music downloads.

What would people pay for? “This is where the apathy definitely came through,” said Donat. “Kind of sorta might buy them… don’t know,” he said. Except in the US, where 70% of fans would pay for text alerts about upcoming shows and tickets, and 67% would pay for ‘members only’ features on artist websites.

Finally, 19% would give absolutely anything they could to meet their favourite band – rising to one third for Brits and Americans.

It was a blazing-fast presentation – Donat only had 15 minutes – but the full thing will be on the MIDEM site, apparently.

Tags: music matters

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 23rd, 2010 at 11:18 am and is filed under Digital Music Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.