iPod users buy little from Apple

Just five per cent of their tracks come from iTunes

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.