Study: Music Fans Acquired More While Spending Less in 2007

Just because something's obvious doesn't mean there shouldn't be a study about it. Market researchers at The NPD Group found that music fans collected more music in 2007 than they did the previous year, and that they somehow managed to do so without spending more money.

Russ Crupnick, entertainment industry analyst for The NPD Group, summarized the findings (below) thusly:

The continued growth in legal download sites is encouraging, yet theindustry struggles to improve the value of each digital customer. Withso many baby boomers and gen-Xers entering the market, there arecertainly opportunities to sell more digital albums, promote oldercatalog titles, or create bundles that will raise revenues... to narrow the gap ondwindling CD revenues.

The NPD Group's findings:

- Consumers acquired six percent more music in 2007 than in 2006.

- Annual music purchases among internet users dropped from $44 to $40.

- Consumers paid for 42 percent of the music they acquired, down from 46 percent.

- 48 percent of US teens did not purchase a single CD in 2007. P2P network usage grew aggressively among teens.

- The percentage of the US internet population using file sharingprograms held relatively steady at 19 percent, but users of those programsdownloaded more files per capita.

- 10 percent of music acquired in the US comes from legal download sites.

- Apple iTunes is now second only to Walmart in terms of music sales volume.

- 29 million US consumers acquired music digitally, as opposed to 24
million last year. Much of the growth was in the 36-50 age group,
which also bought more digital audio players than it had previously.