Analyst Speak: Consumers show they're willing to pay for legal music and movies

10 September 2009

Lightspeed Research surveyed its online panellists about their media downloading behaviour and discovered a significant shift in attitudes and behaviour. It seems that as the market has evolved so have our opinions. The research indicates a move away from illegal to legal media, be that paid or free.

The research, carried out among 2,000 people in the UK in August, shows respondents want to own their music. While in the past this was about vinyl and album covers, now music is stored on a personal device. According to the results, almost the same number of people paid to download music in the last month (20%) as downloaded it free (19%). Peer-to-peer sharing is lower at 14.5%. It appears that music is now so freely available from streaming services such as YouTube, Spotify and Pandora that these sites have driven a return to ownership.

In comparison, free content leads the way for TV and movies. Only 13.6% paid for their visual entertainment in the last month, compared with almost twice that number (26.7%) who enjoyed TV shows and movies for free. In terms of behaviour by gender, men were more likely to download any kind of content, free or paid, while under-25s were the most likely to download free TV/films and music, and were also the most likely to pay to download music.

What seems to be happening is that people are becoming comfortable with watching entertainment on their PCs for longer. The ‘lean back, lean forward’ theory that people wouldn’t watch content on their computers looks as if it too is changing. Could it be that the illegal download market has actually changed viewing behaviour, which in turn is now offering an opportunity to an emerging legal one?

According to the research, which was also carried out in Europe, North and South America and Asia-Pacific, the UK is showing similar behaviour patterns in its media downloading as other developed markets. These share the availability of high-quality premium content, a history of paying for rich content and the ability to pay.

If the future is all about streaming, will people still want to physically own any media? If everything were freely available, paid-for downloading would be a short-lived phenomenon, but it could end pirating. Perhaps that future really is possible.

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