Survey reveals lacklaster response to listening to music on mobile phones

Only 11 percent download tracks to their mobiles

4 September 2006 15:19 GMT / By Amber Maitland

These days we get a bit sniffy about the latest mobile phone if it doesn’t include music-playing capability.

However, a new survey of 3000 people by Entertainment Media Research in association with Olswang suggests the mobile phone manufacturers are wasting their time and effort.

They found that just 11% of those surveyed are paying for music downloads on their mobiles, which is half the amount that said in a similar survey last year that they were interested in downloading.

A quarter of people are interested in mobile downloads, but under 5% said they were “very likely” to start mobile downloading, while a whopping 44% said that they were very unlikely to do so.

Thirty-six per cent said they preferred to download music on to their PCs.

Unfortunately for Apple, which is rumoured to be launching a mobile phone iPod, twice as many of those surveyed preferred a mobile that incorporated an MP3 player rather than have a music player with phone features.

Interestingly, nearly one in five said they would be interested in buying music if their DAB radio had a “buy now” option.

Figures released from the IFPI, a music industry trade group, suggest that only 20% of 3G mobile users actually use their phones to listen to music.

Pocket-lint conducted a similar survey in July 2005, and found out that a whopping 72% of those who participated said they wouldn’t bother to listen to their favourite music on their mobiles, even if they could.

Less than a quarter of respondents said they listened to music on their phones; of the 77% who said they didn’t listen to music on their phone, only 23% said they’d consider it.

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