In March, I wrote a post titled “Remember the mullet? File sharers are next.” Since that time, several studies have been posted that more or less demonstrate that the Google Trends I cited can be used as a forward-looking guidepost.
Google Trends for the music industry are not perfect indicators, but they are worth examining occasionally.
Here are two links to information on the recent surveys on file sharing.
The NPD study…
Downloads from peer-to-peer networks fell 6 percent in 2008, NPD said. Meanwhile, 52 percent of teens said they listened to online radio in 2008, up from 34 percent from 2007. Almost half of teens, 46 percent, used social-networking sites to download or stream music, an increase from 26 percent in 2007, NPD said.
The Music Alley / The Leading Question study…
In January this year 26% of 14 to 18 year olds admitted filesharing at least once a month compared with 42% in December 2007.
There’s a permanent list of Google Trends (as links) in the left column of Music Think Tank.