Portable Players Drive Digital Music Use

JupiterResearch finds that adoption of iPods and other portable music players has driven awareness and usage of digital music products and services.

Market analysis firm JupiterResearch has issued a new report, U.S. Music Consumer Survey, 2006, which finds that adoption of portable MP3 music players—particularly Apple’s iPod line, has raised awareness and usage of digital music products and services across the board.

According to David Card, VP and Senior Analyst at JupiterResearch, “Over 60 percent of portable music device users regularly rip music, while 58 percent of iPod users and 44 percent of users of other portable music devices use playlists.” Overall, JupiterResearch says use of playlists has reached a penetration rate of 25 percent…which we take to mean that roughly three out of four portable music player users don’t use playlists to organize their music, presumably finding organization by artist, album, genre, and other tags sufficient for their needs.

JupiterResearch also found that te size of consumers’ digital music collections has increased significantly over the last three years, but a mere 18 percent of online adults with music collections have more than 1,000 songs on their computers.

“Traditional methods of music promotion, such as radio and music videos, remain the leading influences over consumer’s music purchases,” said David Schatsky, President of JupiterKagan, in a release. “Music companies should market online broadly to heavy music listeners and spenders.”