Online Music Fans Shelling Out for Sounds

Not only are music downloads on the up, but a recent survey has found that music fans are spending more online than they did offline.

by Helen Leggatt

A recent Nielsen Soundscan survey puts the total number of downloads for 2006 at well over 500 million, another year on year climb.

The Insightexpress survey for the DiMA shows that 42 percent of digital music fans are spending more than $200 per year on music. That figure is considerably more than the spend level prior to the digital age, which was around $100 per customer, or around 6 CDs per year.

Consumers are also spending more time listening to and discussing music. Almost 60 percent report they are listening to more since using an online service such as Yahoo!Music, iTunes, Zune and Napster, to name but a few.

Online listeners are also expanding their musical tastes, with 25 percent of the 1,008 survey participants finding new artists and 7 in 10 discovering new genres.

"These findings demonstrate that real music fans, and today's music tastemakers, are online," said DiMA Executive Director Jonathan Potter. "This makes the 2006 holiday sales jump in music devices and sound recordings exponentially more important to artists, songwriters, producers and music publishers, as online music's impact extends way beyond immediate revenues."