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The music downloads market is becoming ever more crowded - Amazon and Panasonic are only two of the most recent entrants - as illegal file swapping via peer-to-peer networks come under increasing legal pressure and broadband connections increase. So how successful have these services been in meeting the needs of users? Specifically, to what extent have the systems designed to control access to these services deterred or frustrated users who have paid money for legitimate access to the music tracks?

Downloads at your service

We asked you tell us your thoughts about music on the move and the impact of DRM (digital rights management) on legitimate music download services...

But first of all, thank you to all the respondents who took the time to take part in the survey - all 1,085. This is a good sample that was evenly split (50.5% versus 49.5%) between those who had never paid to download a music track and those that had.

The first question we asked was: Which services have you used to pay for and download music?

Unsurprisingly, given its early dominance of the download market, Apple's iTunes Music Store was the most popular service, recording 43.7 per cent of respondents who had used a legitimate service. But it doesn't have things all its own way. Napster and MSN Music Club weren't too far behind, with 21.0 and 13.4 per cent respectively, followed by my Coke Music on 8.38 per cent.

The Wanadoo and Virgin.net ISPs registered 7.4 and 6.7 per cent respectively for their music offerings. And then came familiar High Street-based services: HMV (6.0 per cent), Tesco (6.6 per cent) and Woolworths (4.6 per cent). Others to note are Tiscali's offering (4.2 per cent), e-music (2.9 per cent) and the Russian website allofMP3 (2.2 per cent).

We should expect the Virgin service to push on, when it re-launches its Virgin Digital online store in September. Also interesting is the strength of the familiar shopping brands - the likes of Tesco and Woolworth should figure even larger once music downloads achieve wider acceptance among the general public.

An attraction of the allofMP3 site is its absence of DRM controls. It represents a safe harbour for those who wish artists to receive some remuneration but don't accept any imposed control over the content they have purchased.

Destination of downloads

We also asked: On which device(s) do you play the downloaded music on? MP3 players accounted for 73.6 per cent - a third of which were specifically iPods - and the Windows platform (PC or notebook) registered 71.9 per cent, as against 2.6 per cent for a Macintosh computer or notebook. Linux was virtually under the radar with 1.69 per cent.

What was interesting was the amount of people already using their phones as a music platform - 12.6 per cent have played downloaded music on their mobile.

DRM

When content is digital and designed for mobile devices - who can control how that content is accessed and copied? This is the question we investigated in the DRM (digital rights management) section of the survey. It is a vital question for the music industry when more and more people use the Internet and mobile digital audio devices to download and play digital music increase in capacity and functionality.

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a way of monitoring and regulating the use of a music track that has been paid for and downloaded. Most paid-for music downloads are copy protected with some form of DRM to prevent them being shared in an unauthorised way between people or even between devices owned by the same person.

But how many users of legitimate download services - all of which implement in some form, and to varying degrees, a form of digital control - are aware of such possible constraints on the content they are purchasing?

The worrying indication is that a sizeable minority of users - as much as a quarter - are not fully aware of DRM issues. Over 17 per cent declared they were unaware of such possible copy protection restrictions on the product they were paying money for, with a further 10 per cent not being sure on the issue.

This suggests that a large body of consumers could become dissatisfied when they encounter the restrictions and limitations - the small print of the licence, if you will - surrounding the content that they have paid for. Almost half of these had used the iTunes service, with a quarter using the Napster paid-for download service.

The key term is licence and the specific terms of a contract that it implies - the digital content is not actually bought outright, as is the case with a physical equivalent, such as a CD. Contract law supersedes copyright law in these matters, and the terms and conditions of the transaction will

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include an important DRM element.

Another problem for service providers to cope with is that when content has long been freely available, by one means or another - such as P2P networks - any attempts to control access can be seen as an imposition. We asked: Has a DRM system ever frustrated your legitimate attempts to use a service? One fifth of respondent said 'Yes', which represents a considerable amount of customer dissatisfaction.

Napster and MSN Music clubs were particular targets of wrath, but iTunes got plenty of name checks, too. Lets take a few, more or less typical, experiences.

One Napster user, for example, reported that the service would not allow them to play the paid-for files on their particular mp3 player. 'My Iriver iFP-899 has DRM inbuilt but its not on Napster's "approved" list of MP3 players,' they reported. 'When a CD is purchased it can be used in any CD player. 'The same should be true for purchased music down loads regardless of format,' they point out, not unreasonably.

For MSN Music Club, one frustrated user typically reported: 'They restrict the number of licenses issued. I've had several changes of hardware over the past coupled of years and some of the changes have meant that I needed to download the tracks again and get the license re-issued. I was angry and frustrated when I was unable to obtain a license for music I had paid for just because I wasn't able to back up the license I received in the first place.'

Such examples of DRM implementations frustrating normal use can only lead to one outcome: unhappy customers. 'As soon as I've spent the credit I have available I won't be using MSN Music again unless they change their license policy,' the user commented.

(At this point it is worth mentioning, Microsoft's www.playsforsure.com website, which attempts to dispel some of the confusion in this area - the plethora of players and music stores that rely on Microsoft's Windows Media technology but that have problems when it comes to talking to each other.)

With iTunes being the most popular service, you might expect it to generate the most complaints - 13.5 per cent of those who felt frustrated with the DRM surrounding their downloads cited iTune Music Store.

'The music once purchased from iTunes in AAC protected versions does not always work with digital music routers like Sonos/Soundbridge/Squeezebox 2/Rokus,' commented one respondent, 'and so DRM affects my decisions in the purchase of hardware to legitimately stream music from one room to the next.'

Another one raised the old chestnut of multi-device, multi-platform compatibility. 'I do not have an iPod. I do not want an iPod. I have downloaded music only available via iTunes (ignoring illegal alternatives), burnt to CD then ripped to MP3, simply to get it on my non iPod MP3 player. Pointless Mr Jobs... and so easy to bypass'

And a Linux user is equally unhappy: 'Any service which uses Windows DRM as I use a Linux Computer. iTunes was only possible using a circumvention of the DRM process.'

DRM specifics

We also asked you for your general views on DRM copy protection on downloaded music.

A large majority of 71 per cent viewed it negatively, agreeing with the statement that it was 'A restriction on what you can do with something you've paid for'. And 20.8 per cent felt that it was 'A way of locking people into particular download sites'.

Somewhat less negatively, 14.8 per cent declared that DRM was 'Necessary to protect musician's rights. A similar number declared it to be 'Necessary to protect publishers' rights rather than musician's rights'.

Interestingly, only 17.7 per cent declared it to be no different from other copyright protection. Potentially, this indicates a widespread misunderstanding of the principles DRM, which is nothing if not a mechanism for protecting access. It suggests over 82 per cent view it as a uniquely 'evil' imposition on the music download market.

We also asked: What impact has copy protection on downloaded music had on you? The responses here should give all download services pause for thought. Thirty-six per cent said it influenced them not to pay for downloadable music, and 26 six per cent declared that it affected how much you they were prepared to pay. For any company concerned about income and revenue margins, this should send a warning signal - about the potential custom that is being sacrificed because of DRM systems viewed as overly harsh.

Fifteen per cent agreed that it affected which type of music device they used, and four per cent specified 'other' effects: particularly the encouragement to buy CDs to have free control over a master copy, and the effect of being driven towards sites that don't impose restrictions. Others commented that it increased their reluctance to adopt the new technology.

Finally, 34 per cent boldly declared that copy protection had no impact on them.

The survey was carried out by Demographix.com

In a second article we look at the survey results about using a mobile phone as a music centre - Music on the move: music on a mobile phone.

NB: The randomly selected winner from the survey has been contacted by email. Thank you, again, for all those who took part.