The Kids Are Spot-on

Interesting figures from new research:

Marrakesh Records and Human Capital surveyed 1,000 15 to 24-year-olds highlighting not just how important music is to young people, but their changing attitudes to paying for content. 70 percent said they don't feel guilty for illegally downloading music from the internet. 61 percent feel they shouldn't have to pay for music. And around 43 percent of the music owned by this age group has not been paid for, increasing to 49 percent for the younger half of the group.

But the battle to get them to pay for music has not been lost entirely:

This age group felt £6.58 is a fair price for CD album, but that a downloaded album should be just £3.91 and a single 39p - almost half the price charged by Apple's iTunes Store.

Clearly, if the music industry wants to stand any chance of retaining people's willingness to pay for content, it had better move its prices down to this level pretty sharply. If they don't, it's not hard to predict what will happen the next time they carry out this research.