MUMBAI: Does this indicate any relief to the music industry? A new survey conducted in the UK by The Leading Question and Music Ally Speakerbox has found that music customers of all ages still prefer the CD to downloading, a pattern that extends into the lucrative teenage demographic. That's not to say online offerings aren't important, though—those who use subscription or streaming services tend to buy more CDs than others, so online music discovery is clearly helping to keep those sales alive.

The firms The Leading Question and Music Ally Speakerbox conducted a thousand face-to-face interviews with UK music lovers between the ages of 14 and 64, all of whom had broadband connections. Seventy-three percent of the group reported being happier buying CDs than downloading, with 66 percent of those between the ages of 14 and 18 being among that group. Over half (59 percent) reported listening to CDs every day.

All those CDs that go for spins every day may not represent purchases, however. According to the report, CD burning is the number one 'sharing activity' (at 23 percent), ranking above 'bluetoothing' and filesharing (18 and 17 percent, respectively). This is the same info that was mentioned in The Leading Question's file sharing report from earlier this week—P2P use appears to be down among all ages in the UK, but ripping and burning CDs remains popular. That's probably because it's still one of the easiest ways to get high-quality rips of music without the hassle of DRM. You can never rely on those P2P folks to rip anything the right way, much less label it correctly.

Still, subscription and music streaming services are apparently doing their part to help people decide which music (CD or otherwise) to buy. According to The Leading Question's research, those who pay for a subscription service such as Napster spend more on CDs than the average music buyer (?16.87 per month, compared to ?11.37). The same applies to people who listen to streaming music—those people spend ?12.17 per month on CDs and ?7.02 per month on downloads, compared to ?3.81 per month spent on downloads by the average music fan.

"While we fully expect that digital will eventually replace most physical consumption, this is not a clear cut replacement cycle like the change from vinyl to CD. It's particularly encouraging that those who are listening to streamed music on their computers are actually buying more music on both CDs and downloads than the average music fan," Music Ally CEO Paul Brindley said in a statement. "This suggests that digital can and is being used as a way of sampling new music which users may then go on to purchase."

This much we already knew - it's precisely what makes music pirates some of the biggest buyers of music. Being able to "sample" music before committing to a purchase has always been the go-to way to hook music lovers. In this case, it's clear that whatever life CDs still have left, it's being prolonged in part due to the proliferation of online music offerings. With fewer and fewer people buying CDs these days and iTunes becoming the number one music retailer in the US, though, the CD's golden days are certainly behind it, even if music fans are still turning to their (home-burned) physical discs.