Another survey has shown that music downloading is becoming less of a male dominated activity. The fourth European Music Census from TV and online digital music broadcaster Music Choice surveyed a pretty impressive 45,000 people across Europe, and showed that while more men were buying music from legal download platforms, the number of women accessing digital music was increasing rapidly.
Here in the UK the increase in the number of females downloading music was 10%, compared to 5% for males. That means that while more men than women are downloading music, the difference between the sexes is declining. The survey also reveals that, in the UK at least, female downloaders access digital music sites more frequently and buy more tracks per month.
Music Choice's census also shows that the percentage of the population downloading is highest in Germany, where 69% of those interviewed were downloading music. Next highest was Norway with 62%, then it goes UK (40%), Sweden (35%), Italy (30%), Denmark (24%) and France (17%). That said, while lots of Germans are into downloading, they don't seem to be into downloading all that much. The percentage of users downloading more than fifty tracks a month is highest in Norway (32%), with only 2% of downloaders in Germany accessing that much music each month. 7% of downloaders here in the UK are buying that quantity of music each month.
Finally, the survey also looked at what factors are turning people off from downloading music. Needless to say user-friendliness was key - with 36% saying ease of use, or lack of it, would stop them from downloading. 34% said cost was a preventing factor, while 10% cited technical reliability and 18% size of music catalogue (though it's not clear if the problem was that catalogues were too small with certain key artists missing, or if they were just too damn big to navigate).
Commenting on the survey, Music Choice Music & Marketing Director Simon George, told reporters: "This year's Census has produced an invaluable insight into the digital music age, with the growth of downloading the most evident. The download phenomenon has advanced rapidly over the past year and is fast becoming a commonplace method for purchasing music. Our annual European Music Census allows us to track consumers' evolving attitude towards downloading. The finding that some people are still turned off by hard-to-use download stores supports our own approach to developing digital music services - to make them easy for consumers."
Press info on the survey from Lexis PR - [email protected] or [email protected]