The Register (UK) has a story previewing an upcoming PC Data report that hammers home my point (and, unfortunately, the record industry’s point) about Napster — once people have integrated free music as part of their lives, they stop buying compact discs:
PC Data’s latest survey of the buying habits of some 120,000 US home-based Net surfers shows that Napster users soon cut the number of albums they buy, once they get proficient at downloading songs from the MP3 sharing service.
The company measures sales through online stores. It found that “new Napster users are just as likely to purchase music at cdnow.com after initially downloading Napster software. However, 90 days after downloading Napster software, consumers’ online music purchases plummet”.
The PC Data report also found that after getting familiar with the application, Napster users were far more likely to visit web retailers like CDNow, but they were less likely to actually make purchases — they tended to visit the sites to find out what new music to search for on Napster!