United States: A research firm on Tuesday said more American consumers are buying digital music from online stores and bittorrent sites which cause slumping sales of compact discs in the market.
According to NDP Group’s annual Digital Music Study, sales of digital music rose by more than 8 million last year compared to 2007 which has a total sales of 36 million.
While online music stores are fast-growing, CDs are becoming less popular nowadays since most people consider themselves as web-centric consumers. In 2008, the research firm said there were 17 million fewer consumers of CDs compared to the previous year while digital music downloads rose by nearly 30 percent. With this trend, the group said over 33 percent of all the music tracks was digitally purchased in the country.
Meanwhile, NDP realized that online music buyers mostly consist of teenagers and young adults. But in terms of other demographics such as social class, education background, and race, there has been no apparent trend in the study that tells the likelihood of buying digital music or CDs.
“The CD buyers’ decline cuts across all demographic groups”, NDP said.
While digital music is on the rise, it does not mean the music industry is experiencing sales growth. On the contrary, there were nearly 13 million less buyers in the country last year compared to 2007.
In a statement, NPD entertainment industry analyst Russ Crupnick said they are seeing a positive development for the music industry because there is a remarkable increase of paid downloads last year.
Few years ago, online/bittorrent sites have long been criticized for allowing people to download music for free and without seeking royalty fee from them.