At 04:47 PM 2/19/2004 -0600, Lee Elliott wrote:
>> In other words, the people on Napster-like 
>> services are more likely the heavy music buyers
>
>I don't think this is true, most of the people I've talked to who
>download lots, want top 40 hits to burn to cd for their car (because the
>radio is only playing the song once an hour).  Mostly middle class young
>types with enough money to buy the music but they want a big house and
>an SUV and have to cut corners somewhere.  But they can pay for
>broadband and a fast pc (with a cracked version of Office pro) and an
>mp3 car stereo and pirate satellite cards and game console mods chips
>and VCD players, etc, etc, etc.  There is a huge mainstream pirate
>culture.

To clarify, are we talking about Kazaa/old school Napster/etc. or the newer
crop of legal download things like iTunes, or both?  Because I think those
two things have two different audiences.  My view is that the illegal
download networks are about half people like Lee's describing -- although I
think they tend to be much younger than Lee's young professionals -- and
half hardcore zealots looking for their 176th Phish live show.  The few
people I know who use the iTunes Music Store are people more like my friend
who just bought a mini-iPod to use while she's at the gym and who went
through the 74 CDs she owns (!!!) and found a total of 142 songs she liked
enough to put onto her hard drive (!!!!!!).  She is ALL about the iTunes
Music Store, because it allows her to cherrypick the one or two songs she
actually likes per album.  So that's more for people along those lines.

Personally, I've had iTunes on my hard drive for weeks and I've never
bothered to even look at the Music Store.

S