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by Andrew Mayeda
The Ottawa Citizen
Jun 25, 2004
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An uncommissioned survey suggests the music
industry could have its hands full convincing Canadians to pay for online
music.
Unpaid downloads of music files rebounded this spring after falling
when the music industry uncorked a wave of lawsuits against U.S. file
sharers, a survey by Toronto market research firm Solutions Research
Group shows.
The poll also found that only eight per cent of Canadians have ever
visited a pay download website such as Moontaxi Media Inc.'s Puretracks.com,
which offers songs starting at 99 cents. And four in five of those visits
were simply to browse, not buy.
That can't be good news for online music vendors, which have multiplied
in recent months. Last month, Roxio Inc. launched its Napster service
in Canada. Big brands such as Future Shop, a unit of Best Buy Co., and
McDonald's Corp. have also entered the market.
"Many Canadians want to do the right thing, but the value of money
proposition for paid downloads at $0.99 per song is not perceived as
attractive," said Kaan Yigit, president of Solutions Research.
"The market for 'legal' downloads appears very limited, except
perhaps as a promotional tool to build traffic, as both McDonald's and
Future Shop have recently done."
The firm conducted the survey by phone in May, polling 1,605 Canadians
aged 12 or older. The results were charted against similar surveys in
March and October 2003.
Fifty-one per cent of teens aged 12 to 19 said they had downloaded music
the previous month. That compares with 40 per cent last winter and 60
per cent in spring 2003, when unpaid downloading peaked.
Mr. Yigit said the use of file-sharing programs such as Kazaa fell sharply
at the end of last year, in the wake of the much publicized legal campaign
by the Recording Industry Association of America.
RIAA began filing lawsuits against file sharers roughly a year ago and
has now sued nearly 3,500 people.
In March, a Federal Court of Canada judge ruled that neither downloading
or uploading music files is illegal in Canada. But Mr. Yigit doubts
that decision had much effect on young Canadians.
Brian Robertson, president of the Canadian Recording Industry Association,
was not surprised by the results but was encouraged that among those
aged 12 to 29, 42 per cent considered downloading songs theft, up seven
points from 2003.
CRIA, which represents big record labels such as Universal Music Canada,
has appealed the March decision. Mr. Robertson said he expects the appeal
to be heard in the fall.
The survey results are considered accurate within 2.4 percentage points,
19 times out of 20.
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