| Over-50 population drives music sales in Britain, says survey |
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LONDON: The over-50 population in the U.K. supports the music industry in the country in a big way, a recent survey has revealed.
The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) and a charity, Age Concern, found in a joint survey covering 10,000 people aged over 50 that the group accounted for nearly a quarter of all album purchases in 2004. As much as 59 per cent had bought an album in the previous three months while 20 per cent bought six or more CDs a year.
Even as the "gray group" contributed in a significant manner for the survival of the country's 2 billion-pound record industry, research showed that the group's members are comfortable with digital music and gadgets touted by the young like MP3 players and other digital contraptions. Almost 25 per cent of the people, who do not own a digital music player, said they intend to acquire one.
The BPI believes that this trend will be a great boon to the industry as the aging population grabs classic back-catalogue artists in digital form.
Sales of digital songs have crossed the 23 million mark in 2005, which is 400 per cent increase over 2004. The figure may go up in the last week of the month as those people who have received MP3 players as Christmas gifts may buy the songs in digital format to try out the gifts.
BPI's spokesperson Matt Phillips said nearly a quarter of all albums sold are bought by older music fans -- "and that percentage is set to grow as the UK population ages".
Apple Computer's iPod has been cited as the gadget that initiated many in the older genre into the digital music world.
The survey said only 4 per cat of the above-50 music lovers owned digital music players, but 23 per cent of them plan to buy one shortly. Their preferred artists are Il Divo, Rod Stewart, Tony Christie, Katherine Jenkins, G4 and Ronan Keating.
Nearly 59 per cent of the respondents said music is an important part of their lives, with preference for classical music. Some 64 per cent said they liked rock music, country music too was popular, 45 per cent listened to BBC Radio 2 and 53 per cent listened to local stations.
Posted
on : Mon, 26 Dec 2005 20:05 GMT | General News
By : Mike Lawson
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