According to The NPD Group, a market research firm in Port Washington, NY, an estimated one million consumers dropped out of the CD buyer market in 2007, a flight led by younger consumers. In fact, some 48% of U.S. teens did not purchase a single CD in 2007, compared to 38% in 2006.
NPD reports that the amount of music that US consumers acquired last year increased by 6%. However, despite a sharp increase in legal digital download revenues it was not enough to offset a declines in physical CD sales, which resulted in a net 10% decline in music spending (from $44 to $40 per capita among Internet users). As a result the overall portion of music consumption that consumers actually paid for fell to 42% in 2007 from 48% in 2006
The percent of the Internet population in the US who used illegal P2P and file-sharing services reached a plateau of around 19% last year. But, the number of files each user downloaded increased, and P2P music sharing continued to grow aggressively among teens.
According to the study legal music downloads now account for 10% of all music acquired in the US, and is why Apple’s iTunes is amazingly now the second-largest music retailer in the US after Wal-Mart!
Source: ZeroPaid
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/9294/Study:+More+Teens+Not+Buying+CDs
Wow! I feel so "hip", so current, so relevant! While I don't buy a lot of new music, I haven't purchased a CD in at least three or four years now. I buy and download all my music from iTunes!
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