Movie downloading is increasing in popularity, with awareness higher among certain demographic groups, such as men and those between the ages of 12 and 34, according to a new report by market research consultancy Ipsos-Insight.
A survey of over 1,000 US consumers found that 33% of respondents have never heard of movie downloading and 20% say they don’t know or are not sure about it. Out of the remainder, 43% are familiar with the practice, 3% have engaged in it in the past but no longer do so and 1% currently down load movies.
The percentage of US consumers who have actually downloaded a movie from the internet is only 4%. Acquiring movies on file-sharing sites has never reached the levels seen for digital music over similar networks.
US analysts, eMarketer, cite one of the reasons for the lack of popularity of movie downloading is the decline in the percentage of US consumers who have downloaded digital music or MP3 files from an online file-sharing site over the last three years.
The emergence of successful premium music download sites has seen US users of the site increase from 2% in 2002 to 11% in December 2004. Recent figures released by internet research specialists Nielsen//NetRatings reveal that in December 2004, 2.2 million 12-17 year olds used the internet for entertainment, with almost half of those visiting a music site during the period (see 78% Of Teenagers Use Internet For Entertainment).
There are a number of premium movie services, such as Movielink and MovieFlix, that allow consumers to rent movies over the internet. User groups for these sites are similar to that of early digital music downloads, according to consumer market research company, NPD Group.
Online movie sites run into problems that do not affect digital music providers, such as movie size files being larger and thus requiring a longer download time or faster connection.
According to the results for the Ipsos poll, movie-downloading activity will grow only minimally in the next year since less than 10% of respondents say it’s “somewhat”, “very” of “extremely likely” that they will download movies in the next 12 months.
Matt Kleinschnit, vice president of Ipsos-Insight’s technology and communications, feels that this presents an opening for the movie industry. He said: “With the music industry struggling in the past few years to define and integrate the role of digital acquisition methods into the existing marketplace, it appears that the motion picture industry is presented with a unique opportunity to learn from the evolution of that category.”
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