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Despite being brandished as the benchmark of success for digital music, all is not rosy in the iTunes/iPod garden, according to one researcher.

Jupiter Research analyst Mark Mulligan claims in his latest report: 'Understanding iPod Owners' Music-Buying Habits' that barely one twentieth of songs on a typical iPod will have been bought from the iTunes store.

The vast majority will not of themselves have generated the music industry any extra revenue: being either ripped from the owner's existing CD collection or downloaded from file-sharing

And iPod owners habits don't appear to stimulate any change in this. Some 83 per cent say they don't buy digital music regularly, and of the minority that do, it is limited to single tracks on a monthly basis.

This year, music lovers in Europe are expected to spend in excess of £260m on digital music, but this belies the fact that most of their music spend will be on CDs. And the report claims that music lovers are just as likely to acquire music via file-sharing sites.

The report's findings show that the music industry is making a dangerous error of judgement in the way it characterises music consumers as discrete groups of purchasers and pirates while they may well be one and the same.

'Digital music buyers do not necessarily stop file-sharing upon buying legally,' it reads.

Thus, aggressive legal campaigns against file-sharers can have ramifications beyond stopping individuals from engaging in swapping copyright content as those same individuals are also buying your music legally.

Clearly, the digital music market has plenty of growing room: the IFPI pegged global sales of pre-recorded music at around $33bn last year. But it only becomes an opportunity if consumers can be persuaded that buying bits is better than a physical disc.