Lack of standards holds back digital music

Despite enjoying fast-growing popularity, music downloads will not replace CDs as the most popular music medium for at least another five years, newly unveiled research has predicted.

According to Jupiter Research, European music downloads will be worth £550m by 2009, but will still account for only 8.1 per cent of the overall music market.

Jupiter pointed out that downloads of digital music are increasing with the creation of legal download sites such as Apple's iTunes.

The analyst firm's research suggests that music downloads will only really take off when the big players allow interoperability of musical formats between different digital devices, and when broadband connections become more commonplace.

"Three quarters of music executives said interoperability would help increase demand for music downloads but that the big players are restricting the move," said Mark Mulligan, research director at Jupiter.

"The European music download market is currently being driven by enthusiasts who put up with interoperability issues."

Unlike CDs, legally downloaded music often cannot be played on a variety of devices, said Jupiter.

"The European digital music market is only just leaving the starting blocks," said Mulligan. "However, the UK is the current music download leader - but it's still far behind US levels."

The research also discovered that most users are currently using music downloads (legal or illegal) to top up their CD collection rather than to replace it.

"The CD remains the best quality of music available on the market, though it's getting rather tired," said Mulligan.