MUSIC DOWNLOADS & PHYSICAL PRODUCTS, PIRACY & MOBILE MUSIC SURVEY RESULTS REVEALED

At the opening of the 9th biennial AustralAsian Music Business Conference August 20-22, 2009, AMBC producers IMMEDIA! have released the fascinating and sometimes alarming statistics of music use piracy and mobile music from over 2000 respondents to a wide ranging online music survey. Industry, government and artist attendees at the event, which features over 50 speakers and nine seminars, will debate the results as part of the programme looking at The Future of Music.

Conducted online at www.TheMusic.com.au the questions explored types of physical music purchased, playback equipment, mobile music trends, downloads and peer to peer file sharing as well as live music. There were 2240 respondents to the 40 questions in the three week survey July 10-30, 2009.

The gender mix was 63% male and 37% female and 50% worked in the music industry of which many were musicians, singer/songwriters, composers, managers, marketing and promotion professionals, journalists and radio--but avid music consumers. The other 50% categorised themselves as non-industry music fans. 22% were either presently students or attended school in the past year.

How they primarily listened to music? Only 7% listened to music via AM or FM radio. 32% listened to music on their computer with speakers or headphones. 21% used a digital music player through a stereo system. 22% used a digital music player with headphones. 16% used a physical product player such as CD or turntable while only 1% primarily listened through streaming radio.

PHYSICAL PRODUCT

What physical music product (CDs, Music DVDs and Vinyl) do they buy? 72% of respondents purchased CDs in the past year, 36% bought vinyl, and 54% purchased one or more Music DVDs.

CDs 28% did not buy a CD in the past year, 31% bought less than 10 CDs, 22% bought between 10-20 CDs, 11% bought between 21-50 CDs, 2% bought 50-99 and 6% bought between 100-500 CDs.

Vinyl 68% did not buy vinyl, 22% bought 1-10 vinyl records, 8% got 11-50 and 1% between 100-150.

Music DVDs 35% bought no Music DVDs, 42% bought 1-5 Music DVDs, 16% bought 6-26 and .1% bought 30-50 with only one respondent buying 100 or more.

But 56% borrow CDs from friends to rip into digital files for their own use.

Where do they buy their CDs or physical music product? Of the purchases in Australia, 16% are from department or electronic retailers, 15% from online CD/DVD retailers 3% from other retailers and 58% from traditional record retailers.

Have they purchased music from overseas physical music outlets in the past year? 39% bought CDs from Amazon.com or other overseas online physical music suppliers.

WHAT MUSIC PLAYBACK GEAR THEY USE

88% of respondents owned a digital music player (non CD): 42% had one, 32% had two, 13% had three and 13% had four or more.

42% had iPods, 21% used an iPhone as a digital player, 10% used a Shuffle, 16% used a Nano.

1.1% used a Zune while 34% used other non Apple players and a whopping 27% used a non Apple phone as a digital player.

52% have and use a vinyl turntable and surprisingly 32% use a tape device for replay as well.

73% used a computer for music playback of which 41% used an Apple, 58% used a PC and .2% used a Unix or Linux O/S

DIGITAL DOWNLOADS

Do they purchase music from a digital store? 62% have bought from an online store in the past year.

The Australian online music stores they used in the past year: In digital purchases, 69% bought music from iTunes Australia, 8% from Big Pond Music, 4% from Sony's Bandit, 2% from ChaosMusic, 3.5% from the newly opened Nokia Comes with Music store, 1% from Vodafone's Music Station, .03% from EMI's Musichead, and 12% from other Australian online digital music stores.

Have they also used overseas digital music stores to purchase downloads? 26% of those who buy music online do not use Australian stores; of those 44% buy from iTunes, US, UK or other iTunes stores overseas; 19% buy from Emusic while 37% buy from other foreign online digital music stores.

How many purchased songs did they estimate were obtained online? 28% had never purchased any digital tunes. 12% had bought between 1-10. 24% had between 11-50. 20% had 51-200, 12% had from 201 to 1000 tunes with the remaining 4% claiming between 1001 to 8000 songs purchased.

How many digital songs in total--legally purchased, legally acquired free and P2P fileshared illegally-did they estimate they had? 10% had no digital songs, 12% had 1-49 digital files, 22% had 50-499, 12% had between 500-999, 15% from 1000 to 4999, 14% between 5000-10,000, 8% from 11,000 to 25,000 songs while 4% had 26,000 to 65,000 and only 2% had between 75,000 to 300,000 as a maximum.

P2P & ILLEGAL FILE SHARING

Do they illegally file share or download music via P2P? 9% claimed to have never done it. 2% did it exclusively. 11% did it frequently, 15% did it moderately, 20% rarely while 13% had done it previously but don't anymore.

What is the primary software they used for file sharing in the past year? 37% used Bit Torrent for illicit file sharing, 33% used Limewire, 2% used Kazaa, 1% used BearShare 27% used a variety of others.

Do they use file sharing to try music before they buy it? 14% do it frequently. 28% did it moderately. 23% do it rarely. 44% never use file sharing to sample music before buying.

If they used file sharing to try music, and like the music, do they buy it? 15% didn't but 63% did. 22% didn't answer.

They were asked to estimate how many file-shared songs they have in their music collection. 28% had no P2P songs. 26% had under 100. 22% had over 100 to 500. 13% had between 1000-5000. And just under 5% had between 5000 to 50,000 songs.

MOBILE MUSIC

55% of respondents use a mobile phone to play music.

31% used an iPhone, 33% were Nokia users, 14% used a Sony Ericsson, 6% used an LG, 5% were Samsung users, 4% had Motorola, 8% used other brands

Of all respondents, only 9% had specifically purchased music via a telecommunications carrier or handset manufacturer. 88% hadn't and 3% did not respond.

Of those who play mobile music, 71% primarily used ripped CD files or other digital music and 29% purchased music specifically for the mobile-which would include iTunes and mobile services.

SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES

Did they use any music subscription service (where you can choose to use any songs for a small monthly fee) in the past year whether on mobile or online? Less than 10% of respondents had used a music subscription service in the past year. Of those, 27% used the newly established Nokia's Comes With Music, 31% used Emusic. Vodafone's Music Station and the now defunct Stripe service were even at 5% each while 30% of the remainder used a variety of other services.

If they could get all the music they would want to play as a streaming service without being able to carry it portably, would they subscribe? 68% said no, 32% said yes

If they could get all the music they want and also be able to transfer it for a higher price to a portable device, would they pay extra for this service? 57.5% wouldn't but 42.5% would.

LIVE MUSIC ATTENDANCE & PURCHASES

In the past year, the number of times respondents have gone out to see live music at a venue--pub, club, concert arena or stadium. 2% didn't go to any shows. 2.5% went to one. 2.75% went to two. 3.75% went to three. 3.5% went to four. 10.5% went to 5-9 shows a year. 15% went to 10-19 annually. 23% went to 20-29. 21% went to 30-49. 12% went to 50-99 and 6% went to more than 100 shows a year.

In the last year, number of times that they bought artist merchandise. A surprising 23% never bought anything at a show. 9% bought once. 13% bought twice. 24% bought 3 to five times. 13% bought 5-10 times. 7.5%% bought 11-20 times and 6% 21-90 times.

This survey is free and can be reproduced on August 20 onwards as long as IMMEDIA! is credited as the producer and the site www.themusic.com.au/suvey is given for the full report.

For further details, contact Phil Tripp tripp@immedia.com.au or (02) 9557 7766 041 22 666 77