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Music: Men buy most, women shop around most, Welsh steal most
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 30 September 2009
Hey, how about some statistics about the way people buy music which may or may not mean anything? That seems like a Wednesday morning sort of thing to do.
Music download comparison site Comparedownload.com has gone out and asked 3000 British people about their music buying habits. They found out that men spend an average of £12,480 on music in their lifetime, while women spend slightly less, £9120. And while men tend to stay loyal to one retailer, women are more likely to shop around to find the best price.
Elsewhere in the survey we are told the average Brit apparently owns thirteen albums they’ve never listened to, but, at the same time, listens, on average, to each album they buy fifteen times. Meaning they must be listening to some of them a great deal more than fifteen times to balance that average out, which makes the statistic itself pretty meaningless. But not as meaningless as the finding that women know the lyrics of 86 songs off by heart, while men know 67.
It’s not all completely generalised gender profiling here, though. There was a bit of inter-nation stuff too. Wales was found to have the highest proliferation of illegal downloading, with nearly half of the Welsh people surveyed admitting to stealing music, while the lowest was found in East Anglia, where only 18% of people said they’d ever obtained any music in a dubious manner. Of course that might just prove the Welsh are more honest when answering surveys.
Overall, 42% of men admitted to illegally obtaining music (with around 25% saying that more than half of their music collection was illegal), while just 29% of women admitted the same.
Asked what led people to illegally download music, most said they did it because the legitimate stuff was too expensive. In fact, 74% of all people quizzed said that they thought music was too expensive, and 63% said they would buy more if it was cheaper.
Commenting on the research, CompareDownload.com boss James Bott said: “The fact that Brits still feel music is too expensive, and 63% would be less likely to download illegally if they could find the music they want to buy at lower costs, show there is real need for better consumer awareness of the best legal download prices out there”.
