The market for legal downloads of music, audio books, videos, games and software continues booming. In the first quarter 2008 Germans carried out 12 million downloads to the value of 52 million Euros which is an increase by 30% in comparison with the same period last year. In particular the interest by people older than 50 is growing.
These are the findings of a study by the GfK association for research on consumption which were presented by BITKOM in Berlin. BITKOM expects this trend to continue in the near future. According to BITKOM, those selling downloads on the internet have every reason to be very satisfied with the results reached in the year 2007. Thus, total turnover last year grew by 32% to 173 million Euros as compared to the year 2006.
BITKOM think that one reason for this boom is the increasing number of people having fast internet access which facilitates the download of large files over a short period of time.
In particular men are driving the demand for downloads. Men currently account for two thirds of all legal downloads (63% in the first quarter 2008). 41% of download clients are younger than 30 years of age. Nevertheless, downloads are not only popular among the young generation. More then one quarter of all purchasers (29%) is nowadays 40 years of age or older. In particular the share of people over the age of 50 is increasing. These increased their download share to 12% of all downloads. One year ago this figure was just 8% so that the increase in this age group amounts to 50%. 