Andre Yoskowitz
11 Nov 2009 16:31
According to a new survey of university students conducted by the University of Reading, the overwhelming majority would prefer to download music than stream it or buy it in-store.
The survey of 10,000 students showed that 75 percent would prefer to download music via iTunes, Amazon MP3 or illegally rather than pay for streaming services such as Spotify.
The source notes the example of TunesPro.com, a legit website which offers music downloads for $0.19, a giant discount off the $1-1.29 that iTunes charges.
Says TunesPro: "We have seen a huge surge of younger people using our site as more and more of torrents and P2P files contain viruses, so our pricing must be competitive enough for the younger students with perhaps less disposable income than professionals. We keep our prices low and concentrate of making money through volume sales. Currently we charge 19c per song and offer a further 10% when a whole album is purchased. We believe this will attract the younger users away from iTunes, which charge almost 6 times more than we do."
A quick check of the frontpage shows albums selling for $2-3, with lots of catalog tracks for 0.19. Some newer tracks will sell for $1.29, as it is at the discretion of the record companies.