A survey from Q Research shows that almost a third of young people aged 11-25 are spending up to 5 a month to download MP3 music tracks, with 3% spending 25 or more each month.
The youngest respondents in the survey are the heaviest users of free downloads, with almost half of them taking advantage of these services. However, despite the fact that the majority of them rely on pocket money, 43% of under 16s are paying up to 10 a month, with 9% paying as much as 10 to 25 every month. But it is the 20-24 year olds who are the biggest spenders. Two thirds of them spend up to 10 a month on downloads, and 16% spend between 10 and  20 per month.
The survey was conducted among just over 1500 Q panellists aged 11 to 25 years between 30 January and 2 February 2007. The main objective of the research was to discover if young people would like to receive music on their mobile.
Three quarters of respondents said they would like to be able to listen to music on their mobile phone, with male respondents (81%) favouring it slightly more than female respondents (72%).
But the findings also indicate that this audience is very aware of the cost of using their mobiles, and although some already use them to listen to music, only 3% of them have downloaded tracks directly to their mobile from the Internet because of the high cost of doing so. The majority of respondents (82%) download tracks to their PC to listen to on the PC, or their MP3 player.
When asked if they could consider accepting advertising messages on their phones in exchange for free MP3 file downloads. 48% said yes and 34% said maybe. Further breakdown of this result shows that the older the respondent, the more opposed they are to receiving advertising to alleviate cost.
This survey shows that while there is already a very buoyant market for paying for MP3 files from the Internet amongst young people, they are very aware of the cost of downloading files to their phones says Q Researchs Dr Liz Nelson. This finding is underlined by other projects we have done, where weve discovered opposition amongst young people to watching video or receiving video ads to their mobiles because of the cost. With so many companies creating additional services to be delivered by mobile phone, from music to advertising to social networking, its crucial that they get really close to young people to understand their attitudes and opinions before launching services aimed at them.