Legal/Illegal Download Reports

J. Evans, Apple Drives Big Music Download Increases in Japan, Digital Music News, 30 November 2005

Digital Music News are reporting iTunes uptake in Japan to be on the increase: "Apple’s August 4th debut drove overall sales of 2.3 million downloads from internet-based music stores during the quarter, against 1.1 million in the preceding quarter and one million in the quarter before that... Meanwhile, cell phone download services continue to dwarf sales of PC-based downloads in the territory. According to data supplied by RIAJ, 97 percent of digital music sales belonged to the mobile industry."



But in stark contrast Jupiter Research indicates that file sharing is still at least three times more popular than legal downloads:

J. Best, Illegal file-sharing three times as popular as iTunes, Silicon.com/ZDNet, 30 November 2005

15 percent of consumers use P2P sites and five percent use the legitimate online shops.

Of those consumers aged between 15 and 24, 34 percent are illegal file-sharers and have little concept of music as a paid commodity. JupiterResearch found that 43 percent of younger consumers prefer copying CDs to buying them and 40 percent believe that CDs aren't value for money.

...illegal file-sharing is here to stay... "It's a firmly entrenched behaviour and the fact it's free makes it more difficult. Instead of [the industry] paying lip service to legal services... there needs to be a whole new layer of free legal services," such as ad-supported downloads..."