Your turn
		Has owning a portable digital player changed your life? Log in for free and discuss it here.

Popular wisdom holds that getting an MP3 player changes how you acquire and listen to music. Now exclusive data from about 3,000 ConsumerReports.org subscribers surveyed in July 2006 by the Consumer Reports National Survey Research Center quantifies how profound those changes can be. The results may be helpful if you're considering buying a player soon for yourself or someone on your holiday list.

Those armies of earbud-wearing music fans aren't simply replacing time spent listening to CD players or other devices. More than 60 percent of first-time MP3 player owners say they're listening to music more often since buying a player. And 50 percent reported they're listening during activities they didn't before.

The survey results confirm CDs as the leading source of content for digital players. Despite the rise of online music stores, more than 80 percent of player owners copy (rip, in digital-music parlance) music from CDs to their computer and then to the player. But about 75 percent of owners also report getting music online.

The music industry claims that the relative ease of sharing music among computers (and the digital-music players used with them) has helped contribute to dropping sales of recorded music. Some music fans and analysts question that assertion.

Both groups will find survey results that support their view. On the one hand, about 20 percent of respondents said they did get tracks free from friends and relatives, and about 15 percent of owners reported downloading music for free online. But not all free downloads are unsanctioned; for example, both iTunes, the leading online store, and eMusic, the No. 2 site in sales, offer free downloads as promotions to encourage further sales. And only about 8 percent of first-time owners said getting a player has prompted them to start using file-sharing programs such as Kazaa and LimeWire, which allow music fans to download music from one another's computer hard drives and have been particular targets of record-industry wrath and legal action. (It's possible, of course, that some respondents underreported such use, due to reluctance to disclose activity whose legality has been questioned. And many users of such software are known to be much younger than typical Consumer Reports' subscribers.)

Buying tracks from online stores was more common for owners of iPods, the Apple players that dominate sales and (unlike other brands' players) work seamlessly with iTunes, whose library of both music and video is the biggest on the Web. Conversely, a higher percentage of non-iPod owners reported signing on with a monthly subscription service. (While there's no subscription plan available for iTunes content, players from other brands support services in which you essentially rent music in exchange for a monthly fee.)


THE BOTTOM LINE

Acquiring an MP3 player may well change your music habits or those of someone you're shopping for. It's likely to increase how much music is heard, where it's heard, and how it's bought--with more of it acquired online, unsurprisingly, and perhaps song by song rather than in the album-sized helping of the compact disc. If that shift sounds disconcerting, take heart in a final survey figure: Overall, a whopping 70 percent of respondents were very or completely satisfied with their player.