iPod users buy little from Apple

Apple iPod users are filling their iPods with music that doesn’t come from the pricey iTunes online music store.

A survey by Jupiter Research has discovered that an average of just 20 tracks on an iPod are bought from iTunes – about five per cent. The vast majority of music on iPods consists of ripped CDs and music downloaded from file-sharing sites.

Jupiter found that even though Europeans will splash out around £260m on digital music this year – it’s a small percentage of the digital music market. It claims that 83 per cent of iPod owners don’t buy online music on a regular basis while just 17 per cent admit to buying and downloading mostly single tracks at least once a month.

The report warns that the ‘free’ concept is still very important to most digital music users and advises that newer services should look into offering ad-supported ‘free’ services, like the forthcoming Spiral Frog service.