Music Ally

Music Ally’s sister research company The Leading Question has revealed that most UK music fans are still happier buying a CD than downloading, The 1,000 strong face to face survey of UK music fans showed that nearly three quarters (73%) of music fans were still happier buying CDs rather than downloading.

The dominance of the CD was still high even amongst the teens with two thirds (66%) preferring CDs to downloads. CDs are also far and away the most preferred format for listening to music with nearly twice as many fans listening to CDs every day (59%) compared with MP3 players (32%).

The research also showed that even the most digitally advanced music fans continue to buy CDs, with little evidence that digital music consumption is simply replacing physical consumption.

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Music Ally’s sister consumer research company The Leading Question has released data from its fourth annual Speakerbox survey of UK music fans showing a drop of a third in regular music filesharing amongst UK teenagers.

For the first time the survey also showed a higher percentage of fans regularly purchasing downloads (19%) compared to obtaining tracks from file sharing (17%). The volume of tracks obtained for free compared to purchased tracks had also narrowed from 4:1 in Dec 2007 to 2:1 in Jan 2009 when the face to face survey of over 1,000 music fans was carried out.

We think the positive figures represent both greater takeup of legal streaming services among teens – in particular YouTube – and other competing ways of finding music for free such as CD burning and Bluetooth. Nearly twice as many teens (31%) stream music every day compared with most music fans (18%).

However, the fact that UK teens are using YouTube as a legal source of music jars with the fact that YouTube UK has removed all premium music videos due to a dispute with PRS for Music. Perhaps this research will provide an extra incentive for the pair to resolve their licensing disagreement.

Music Ally TV presents The Great Escape 2008: The Leading Question & Music Ally Research Findings. Part 3 of 3 videos.

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