Most youngsters prefer to get music from their friends: Nokia

NEW DELHI: The majority of youngsters looking for the latest music usually source it from their friends instead of buying it at their local music store, says a survey by Finnish handset-maker Nokia.

According to the Nokia Music Youth Survey 2011, 94 per cent of respondents said they preferred to transfer music from friends to get access to the latest songs.

The next-most popular source for getting access to music was free downloads from pirated song sites on the internet, with 69 per cent of the respondents saying they accessed such sites to download their favourite artists, it said.

The least popular avenues for acquiring music are CDs and cassettes from music stores and mobile operator's websites.

Bollywood music was the clear favourite of most youngsters, with 90 per cent of the survey respondents listening to it, while 71 per cent said they downloaded Indian classical music and 70 per cent said they preferred devotional songs.

About 98 per cent of the respondents said they shared music with their friends, while 63 per cent said they shared music with their siblings. About 62 per cent said they shared music with colleagues as well.

Almost all (99 per cent) of the respondents said they used their mobile handsets to listen to music, while 83 per cent said they also tuned into TV channels for their dose of music.

About 48 per cent said they listened to music on the radio.

The survey was conducted among 1,439 respondents by Synovate.

"The study is part of a regular exercise at Nokia to understand what the consumer is looking for in a device. As reflected, most people are using mobile phones to consume music and that gives us an insight to what they are looking for in a device," Nokia India Marketing Director Viral Oza told PTI.

Nokia had launched its Ovi Music Unlimited service in April, 2010, in India on certain handsets, which offers unlimited access to music tracks for a year. These include the Nokia E7, Nokia N8 and Nokia X7 models.