E-COMMERCE
Music downloaders prefer rap: survey
09-05-2003
by Ralph Averbuch
A Nielsen//NetRatings study on downloading music from the Net has shown that rap music is the most popular genre purchased by frequent music downloaders.
According to the survey, on-line music enthusiasts were 111 percent more likely to purchase rap music than the average Internet user over the past three months. Nielsen//NetRatings describes on-line music enthusiasts as those who have downloaded music during the past 30 days. Meanwhile, an average Internet user is a person logging onto the Internet for surfing and other purposes.
Dance and club music held the second spot in the survey, with downloaders 106 percent more likely to have purchased dance and club music than the average Internet surfer and 77 percent more likely to purchase alternative rock. R&B/soul music and rock rounded out the top five.
Nielsen//NetRatings also reports that nearly 31 million active US Internet users, or 22 percent of the active Internet population aged 18 and older, downloaded music in the past 30 days. But, crucially, the research firm also reports that 71 percent of this audience also purchased music, either in shops or on the Net, in the past three months.
"Recording industry executives are devoted to finding a successful business model for selling music on-line," noted Senior Analyst Greg Bloom. "The de facto standard may be a few years away but understanding the genres of music that sell well on-line and offline will be crucial to generating revenue along the way."
In recent years the music industry has become increasingly vocal about the activities of on-line music downloaders and the alleged damage this is doing to music sales. Yet this recent study seems to imply that people, actively sampling music via downloads, go on to buy more music than the average net user.
Critics of the music industry claim that falling sales have more to do with a recent drop in the volume of new material put out by the music companies and lacklustre albums than anything to do with people sampling music via the Internet. Some have even argued that music sampling will be good for the music industry in the long-term, encouraging more people to try-before-they-buy.
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