09/18/2006, 4:40pm, EDT

Monday, September 18th

Digital music stalls in Europe

iPod owners in Europe are more likely to buy digital music than owners of other music devices; however, only one in five owners regularly buys songs online. About 83 percent of European iPod owners do no regularly buy digital music, according to new research from Jupiter Research cited by Reuters. Europe's digital music market is expected to double to 385 million euros ($487.1 million) in 2006 from a year ago. Despite the almost 200 million songs sold in Europe to-date, iPod owners on average buy only 20 tracks a year from Apple's iTunes store: "The model isn't broken, there's just lots of room for improvement," Jupiter analyst Mark Mulligan told the publication. "Digital music is really underperforming its potential." In addition, the study found that 30 percent of iPod owners illegally swap songs using file-sharing networks and another 23 percent listen to Web-based audio files for free legally. Jupiter surveyed 4,000 consumers across Europe and found iPod owners much more likely to buy CDs online than they were to buy downloads.

Filed under: industry
Other story tags: digital music/video

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Zkatz007

Huh?

09/18, 5:35pm, EDT

20 tracks a year is not enough? That's more than I would have guessed!

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WiseWeasel

DRM

09/18, 6:12pm, EDT

Well, maybe people are smart enough to know to avoid low-bitrate lossy-compression DRM-protected music when they can buy open format CDs instead. If online digital music distributors would drop DRM and increase quality, maybe they could put a dent in CD distribution.

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ccsccs7

Only 20

09/18, 6:59pm, EDT

Hmm, I think that's probably about right for me in the U.S. (excluding the iTunes Free Song of the Week, of course.)

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Jeronimo2000

4000?

09/18, 7:53pm, EDT

They've asked 4000 people across Europe? And that's what they base their figures on? I mean come on, that's HARDLY representative. That's like a few hundred per country, depending on how they define "Europe". Must be a joke of some sort.

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McDave

Of course!

09/18, 9:43pm, EDT

I wonder how that compares between Mac & Windows (oh wait, that's only 80 of us!)

And how many own-content DVDs (except back-ups) do DVD writer enabled Windows users really produce? In the absence of good, creative software what else can Windows users do except pirate stuff? They see it as their god-given right!

McD

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ZinkDifferent

newsflash...

09/19, 2:14am, EDT

This is no different from US sales - in general, only between 8-20 songs on a person's iPod are bought from iTunes. The rest are simply ripping their music from their CDs, or getting it 'elsewhere'. So, wiseweasel, you may want to shop for a clue, since the vast majority of people are already doing what you advocate.

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macnavi

Credit card

09/20, 2:21am, EDT

Is this a disappointment? I don't think the numbers are bad. I agree with the first poster that 20 tracks in a year is good enough. Much more than not at all! It's 2000% more than before the iTMS.

I think a main reason is that people in Europe still are hesitating using a credit card for on-line purchase. Make the music store work with normal bank accounts and sales will double!

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