“Despite the success of Apple iTunes, few people stock their iPod with tracks from the online store, reports a study,” BBC News reports.

“The Jupiter Research report says that, on average, only 20 of the tracks on an iPod will be from the iTunes shop,” BBC News reports. “Far more important to iPod owners, said the study, was free music ripped from CDs someone already owned or acquired from file-sharing sites.”

“On average, the study reports, only 5% of the music on an iPod will be bought from online music stores. The rest will be from CDs the owner of an MP3 player already has or tracks they have downloaded from file-sharing sites,” BBC News reports.

Full article here.
The results echos similar studies in the past. It’s common sense: most people have purchased and built CD libraries already, why would they buy iTunes Tracks when they already have them? We expect iTunes Store purchases to increase as iPod owers shop via iTunes Store for new music and decrease buying music the old way, on CD. Simple math: divide 1.5 billion iTunes Store tracks sold to date by 60 million iPods and you get 25 tracks per iPod. We did that without conducting a study.

By the way, the music ripped from CDs someone already owned is not “free.” They’ve already paid for the music when they purchased the CD.

JupiterResearch’s Mark Mulligan comments on the report in his blog and mentions, “iPod owners actually demonstrate slightly more positive trends than other MP3 player owners, demonstrating the strength of the iPod/ITMS proposition, but only slightly.”

In January 2006, XTN Data reported that iPod owners are “substantially less likely to download using filesharing software with only 7% of iPod people downloading illegally compared to 25% on average. And they’re more likely to be buying CDs with your everyday iPodder buying 2.3 albums a month compared to the average of 1.8.” XTN Data surveyed over 1,000 UK and US music buyers to arrive at the data. XTN Data also found that 50% of iPod owners regularly download music from Apple iTunes Music Store.

Related articles:
Real CEO Glaser calls Apple iPod owners thieves – May 11, 2006
Study shows iPod owners significantly less likely to steal music than the average person – January 13, 2006
Microsoft CEO Ballmer: ‘Apple iPod users are music thieves’ – October 04, 2004