Music Experience and Behaviour in Young People in the UK

The study Music Experience and Behaviour in Young People is the third survey of its kind – after 2008 and 2009 – for 2011. After a presentation of the key findings of the study in the 3^rd Vienna Music Business Research Days, it’s now an honour and pleasure to exclusively present the results of the current study on the blog. The 2011 study is based on a comprehensive online survey of 1,888 of 14-24 year olds across the UK. The main conclusion of the current research is “(…) that when it comes to music and young people, everything is different, and yet everything is still the same”; compared to 2008 and 2009.

The key findings of the 2011 study are:

• The computer is no longer their main entertainment hub.
• Digital music collections are still huge.
• Digital music collections still contain 50 percent “free” music.
• Ownership is still important.
• Music is no longer the most popular entertainment type.
• There remains a very clear “value gap”.
• The popularity of file sharing has changed significantly.
• The 14-25 years olds are prepared to pay for digital music.
• But there are still challenges for streaming music online.
• Digital music consumption is still complex.
• They have a clear understanding and grasp of what copyright law is.

Please read further if you want to know more about the research results.

How Bad Is Music File Sharing? – Part 17

Michel’s working paper is based on 4 chapters of his dissertation thesis entitled “A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of the Impact of the Digital Age on the Music Industry”. In addition two articles in the Review of Economic Research on Copyright Issues are also based on the findings of the dissertation thesis. Michel constructed a model of interactions between artists, record labels, and consumers, which suggests that file sharing may have been undertaken by consumers who were previously not in the market for music. In order to test his model, Michel provided evidence, based on Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX) data, that “(…) file sharing decreased CD sales by about 4 percent, though the estimate is statistically insignificant” (Michel 2005: 30).

How Bad Is Music File Sharing? – Part 16

In the article “Do Artists Benefit from Online Music Sharing?”, which is based on a 2003 working paper, Gopal et al. (2006) present a model of music file sharing to explain the impact of technological and economic incentives to sample, purchase, and pirate music. The results of the model indicate that lowering the cost of sampling by file sharing will motivate more music consumers to purchase music online. In contrast, the restriction or even prevention of sampling will hurt the music industry in the long run. Read more here:

how bad is music file sharing? – part 3

Boorstin (2004) tested the causality between Internet access and CD sales over the years 1998, 2000, and 2001 using an economic model based on 99 U.S. metropolitan areas. Since Boostin could not directly measure Internet “piracy”, he broke down “(…) the population into different age groups in order to see how Internet access changes the predicted effect of each age group on CD sales.” (Boorstin 2004: 46). He then hypothesizes that “[i]f the effect of file sharing on CD sales is negative for all age groups, I expect the effect of Internet access on CD sales to be negative for all age groups” (Boorstin 2004:47). However, he also admitted that there are good reasons that the effects are not the same for different groups. It can be assumed that the substitution effect is higher for youths than for adults, whereas the sampling effect is stronger for adults than for youths. Therefore, he expected a more negative effect of Internet access on CD sales for youths than for adults.