Summer Investigation: Findings & Conclusion

From my focus group I have found that it is equally weighted in terms of whether or not the participants downloaded illegally. However, due to the small focus group this cannot be seen as a true representation of what consumers actually do. The graph also doesn't tell us whether the male or females are more like to illegally download, however I don't believe this to be entirely relevent. Although the focus group was small, the opinions of the participants can be taken to account; one participant said they illegally downloaded because "music is too expensive" which can be agreed to in a certain degree. In Asda a CD can be brought for £6.99, however when in a music store such as HMV the same CD cost £13.99; we know that Asda doesn't make it's money from music, but why is that there isn't just a difference of a few pence, but rather alot of pounds.

However, from this graph we can see that each participant doesn't just use one type of media in which to consume music. From the graph we can see that the two most popular ways of consuming music for the majority are completely legal: the radio and iTunes. However, it is perhaps worrying to see that illegal downloads are on par with CD's and Vinyl which suggests that hard copies of music are struggling against new techonologies - is this because of the cost of music or because music on the internet is more convenient and accessible? On iTunes some music can be brought for as little as 19p, this type of price is viable for a CD so is the reason that hard copies are struggling? Many consumers I asked said that although expensive, they often preferred a hard copy of the music when they could afford because they could touch it and if felt as though they'd actually brought something, rather than it just saving directly to their hard drive.