Research: Quarter Of Europeans Buy Online Music

'Buy music' on iMac

There’s no doubting the appetite for online entertainment media. New research from Forrester has found that 25 percent of Europeans would be happy to buy online music, although only 14 percent actually had done in the previous month. But: the same survey shows that 58 percent will not pay for any kind of online content, and a growing number of young people are happy to get their content the easy way — illegally and for free.

In a new report, Forrester analyst Nick Thomas says this is a positive for content industries looking to move from physical to online. He says those figures — taken from the research firm’s quarterly Media, Marketing and Social Computing Online Survey for Q309 — represent a “glimmer of hope for those trying to make money from the boom in online media consumption”.

Some more results from the research:

Movies: 23 percent of respondents said they would buy an online film, but only eight percent did so in the preceding month. For Thomas, this means movies have the “greatest potential”.

eBooks: Despite being a very immature market — only four percent of respondents had bought an ebook in the last month — 19 percent said they were interested in paying for an ebook.

News: Our own research series in September found that only five percent of consumers would pay for online news articles. Forrester, though, found greater openness to the idea. In their survey, 12 percent would be willing to part with cash for news, but only four percent had actually done so in the past month.

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