The research, based on the on-line activity of more than 1.5 million internet users, found that 2002 on-line music sales through the third quarter were $545 million, down 25% from the $730 million spend over the same period last year.
According to comScore, the decline in on-line music sales has accelerated throughout 2002, with sales falling by 12%, 28% and 39% in the first, second and third quarters of 2002 respectively. In contrast, the research found that on-line sales of all products, excluding auctions, increased by 30%, 28% and 30% over the same period.
The apparent decline in on-line music sales far exceeds the decline in overall shipments of recorded music as recently reported by PricewaterhouseCoopers for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
While the RIAA reported in August 2002 that total U.S. music shipments dropped 7% in the first half of 2002 versus the first half of 2001 ($5.93 billion versus $5.53 billion), comScore data show that on-line sales of music fell 20% (from $531 million to $424 million) over the same period.
Peter Daboll, division president of comScore Media Metrix, a division of comScore Networks said:
"The music industry attributes the decline in on-line and off-line music sales to a variety of factors, such as a slow economy, fewer hit songs, piracy, CD-burning and file-swapping among others.
"While a host of factors inevitably impact consumer behaviour, the greater sales decline on-line as reported by comScore would suggest that internet file-swapping and CD-burning are having a severe negative impact on music sales among internet users."
After the fall of Napster, comScore data show that US consumers quickly flocked to alternatives, including Kazaa and Morpheus. Each of the latter two increased its average monthly US home user base from less than one million in the second quarter of 2001 to 4.6 million and 7.1 million, respectively, in the first quarter of 2002.
By the close of the third quarter of 2002, Kazaa had built an impressive following of 9.4 million average monthly US home users.