MUMBAI: According to the recent data unveiled by Synovate at the Nokia Music Connects 2010, 17 per cent of the Indian users paid to download music online, the highest in Asia.
The study undertaken on 1,135 internet users in India from age group of 15-24, also revealed that Indians are the greatest music lovers in Asia with 82 per cent of the youth agreeing that music is a very important part of their lives as against rest of the Asia where only 67 per cent of the youth consider it as an important aspect of their lives, giving the Indian music industry more reasons to celebrate. Also mobile phones is the most popular device to consume music in the country with 52 per cent of the youth hooked on their handset for music, as further revealed by the study. Television channels at 19 per cent came next. Personal computers, radio and MP3 players were the other preferred options.
The study gave the ever increasing handset industry a reason to rejoice. 88 per cent of the youth is a proud owner of their own handset, 62 per cent of whom listened to music via their mobiles. The study also made the revelation that in India downloading of music directly onto mobile is far more popular mode to consume music as 23 per cent of Indians resort to it compared to 21 per cent in rest of Asia. 44 per cent of Indians download free music online. China at 58 per cent has the highest numbers of free music downloaders
The study also gave an insight into what the kind of music that the youth listens to. Sonu Niigaam, AR Rahman and interestingly international artiste Akon were amongst the top three preferred artiste for the youngsters
The study was undertaken pan Asia in the countries of China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.