Nearly half of young downloaders don't pay
Jemima Kiss
Wednesday February 14, 2007
MediaGuardian.co.uk

This article is about new research which has found that only half of the 85% of young people in the UK who own mp3 players actually pay for their downloads.

It also found that the majority of people (81%) would rather listen to the music from their mobiles and some have downloaded straight to it. Social networking websites also encourage people to share music files, and the free content downloads was popular amongst teenagers as they rely on their parents' income.

Dr Liz Nelson said that the music companies aren't doing enough to understand teenagers ad this is the way to combat the free downloading.

There will be a launch of a new music download service called MusicStation which only charges £1.99 a week for unlimited mobile music downloads.

Comments: Illegal or free music downloading has been happening for a very long time and they have conducted research only now and found the huge numbers of people who download free music. Although it is effecting the revenue of the music companies and therefore the individual artists whom people are downloading songs from, i don't think they would ever be able to cut down on the number of file sharing websites and free downloading because people especially young people just don't want to pay for the songs. The MusicStation idea is good and it might work but i don't think it would be very effective in the long term.