Majority of People Prefer Real CDs Over Downloadable Music?

Not too often do the results of a report pique my interest, but one recently held by two firms in the UK does, and it likely will for music-lovers of all stripes as well. Despite how it seems right now, it looks as though the majority of music purchasers equipped with broadband Internet would still rather purchase the actual disc in the store, rather than online in a downloadable format.

Given the absolute popularity of iTunes, Amazon’s music store, Zune Marketplace and all the others, I would have thought the absolute opposite (I’m personally very fond of actual CDs, and usually buy one or two a week), but in one thousand conducted face-to-face interviews, 73% prefer a disc copy, and of those, 66% are between the ages of 14 – 18. Yes… the majority of people today who prefer the real thing over a download… are youngsters.

It’s hard to settle on such a small percentage of music buyers, but numbers like these are very pleasing, at least to me. I’m such a big fan of buying music in the store (lossless quality being the number one draw), it gives me a little bit of hope that downloadable albums and songs are not going to kill off these retail music stores as fast as I originally imagined.

Credit: ricktherazor

Still, subscription and music streaming services are apparently doing their part to help people decide which music (CD or otherwise) to buy. According to The Leading Question’s research, those who pay for a subscription service such as Napster spend more on CDs than the average music buyer (£16.87 per month, compared to £11.37). The same applies to people who listen to streaming music—those people spend £12.17 per month on CDs and £7.02 per month on downloads, compared to £3.81 per month spent on downloads by the average music fan.