Positive poppycock about CDs and MP3

Chris Long AnchorDesk

Published: 08 Mar 2001 14:51 GMT

You might want me to show how I came to that conclusion, a bit like a maths exam where you get extra marks if your result was wrong but the working out in the margin was correct.

This insight came to me the other day when I received the CTW News Digest newsletter breathlessly trumpeting: "R.I.P -- The Compact Disc 1970 -- 2005".

I continued to read "A new survey by Mori has revealed that over a third of all people aged between 15 and 24 believe they will stop buying CDs within five years?"

The piece concluded with "and 33 per cent of Internet users can envisage storing ALL their music on a pocket-size portable device within the same time frame."

This intrigued me, and I felt honour bound to track down this report, even if only to laugh at it and gesticulate at my computer screen. So I traipsed off to read the report. Of course it turned out to be a report for Creative Labs, not a company that is known for its CD output, but has, I have heard, got one or two fingers in the MP3 pie -- bit of luck then that the report was so MP3 positive, don't you think?

Apparently this 33 percent of Internet users is defined buy "two public groups -- one covering 1,629 members of the GB public aged 15 to 65 and one comprising 320 people who download music at least once a month. A third element of the project involved research among 60 members of e-MORI's panel of IT journalists." Just over 2,000 people speaking for 'The Internet'

According to this report "People want virtual record collections and the ability to store them on a digital audio device; and 72 percent of those interviewed believe that music companies will have to change how music is sold" In other words 72 percent of people want their music free.

How could we have guessed?

The report attempts to explain what we are reading "What is driving these changes?" It asks "Finding cheap music is the main motivator, but not the only one. The entire music culture is changing. Downloaders foresee an Internet music revolution, with companies having to change the way they sell music."