The new poll, which will be released today by the Digital Media Association, adds to a growing pool of conflicting data about what effect Internet music services are having on the recording industry. Previous surveys found use of the controversial Napster music-sharing program could hurt sales of traditional music recordings.
The new data are under a particular spotlight because of an escalating fight in the courts and Washington over the future of digital entertainment. The major recording companies want strong protections against piracy, and they have attacked services such as Napster, which allows users to download songs they haven't paid for.
In fact, the poll is being unveiled by the digital trade association just as a House subcommittee takes up the issue of copyrights on the Internet, a key policy battleground. The Digital Media Association is a trade group that represents firms offering audio and video services on the Internet.
The new survey, by market research firm Yankelovich Partners, says 66 percent of all consumers said that listening to a song online has at least once prompted them to later buy a CD or cassette featuring the song. The survey included 16,903 people age 13 through 39 who buy and listen to some music.
Music on the Web is growing rapidly, in the form of services that allow consumers to download songs to their own computers, as well as streaming, which offers radio-style music programming via the Internet. According to Media Metrix, the number of visitors to the top 30 Internet music sites grew 19 percent just between November 1999 and April 2000, to 22.8 million in April, the most recent number available. Paid digital music downloading is expected to hit $1.1 billion in sales by 2003, according to a projection by Forrester Research.
The survey, done during March, was sponsored by a group of Internet, software and hardware firms, as well as one unidentified recording company, Yankelovich said. The survey paints a portrait of how consumers are using the Internet music services. Two-thirds of the people polled said they had downloaded music from an online source. Nearly three-quarters said that in the future, people will get most of their music online.
Of those who were downloading or streaming music, 92 percent listen to it on their desktop computers, while just 10 percent used a portable device and 14 percent used their home stereo. More than 60 percent of them used the Internet to get to music they can't find on radio.
More Likely to Buy CDs But perhaps the most striking statistics dealt with the effect the Internet music could have on purchases of traditional, physical forms of music. A third of people who stream music said it made them more likely to purchase CDs in stores, while 61 percent said it didn't affect their buying habits. Only 6 percent said that listening to streamed music made them less likely to buy CDs.
Meanwhile, almost a third of those who have downloaded music said it made them more likely to buy, while 57 percent said their buying patterns weren't affected.
"Internet music is creating new markets," said Jonathan Potter, executive director of the Digital Media Association.
The findings appear to contrast with data released this week by the recording industry as part of its lawsuit against Napster Inc.. Those two surveys targeted college-age consumers. One survey by SoundScan, a company that tracks retail record stores, found that music sales at stores near college campuses that had recently banned Napster were down from the first quarter of 1999 through the first quarter in 2000, while overall national sales grew.
The other, from Field Research Corp., found that 41 percent of Napster users said or implied that the service had replaced some of their CD purchases.
"There's a huge difference between promotional uses authorized by copyright holders and wholesale piracy, which our studies show significantly hurt CD sales," said a spokeswoman for the Recording Industry Association of America.
