Despite Free Streaming, Music Remains Popular Holiday Gift [STUDY]
Despite the rising popularity of Pandora, Spotify, Rhapsody and other options for streaming music, digital music downloads and CD's continue to be a popular gift choice, according to an NPD Group study. This year 12 percent of U.S. consumers reported that music would be on their holiday gift lists. Music gift buyers also intend to increase their spending on music by 18% over last year. That's the largest spending increase among all the gift categories that the survey tracks.
36% of all music downloads were
purchased with a gift card, according to the survey. “Music gifting is not just about festively
wrapped CDs anymore, now that music consumers can now purchase iTunes,
Rhapsody or Spotify Gift Cards at Target, Walmart, and other big-box
stores,” said Russ Crupnick, senior vice president of industry analysis at NPD.
Age Of Buyers
One quarter of consumers who intend to give music as a gift were between the ages of 18 and 34. According to Crupnick, “the widely held belief that younger music listeners no longer value traditional music-buying formats appears to be moot, at least when it comes to holiday gift giving.”
Impulse Buys Important
Impulse shopping remains important when it comes to sales of
CDs and digital downloads, and that’s where music really benefits from
holiday shopping traffic. 26% of CD purchases were driven by impulse and 16% by
in-store browsing. Walmart shoppers were most likely to purchase music
on impulse (32% of Walmart’s CD sales). 25% of Amazon CD buyers also reported that they purchased CDs on impulse, along with 22% of digital music download purchasers.
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