iPod/MP3 players owned by 11 percent of adults

February 14, 2005 by Mike Wendland

A Pew Internet & American Life Project study released today says 11% — or more than 22 million of those who are age 18 and older - have an iPod or MP3 music player. Project director Lee Rainey says it’s safe to say that there are several million more MP3 players owned in the teen world, but Pew did not survey teens in this poll.
Here are some of the details:

Men are more likely to have iPods/MP3 players than women. Some 14% of men have the players, compared to 9% of women.

Almost one in five (19%) of those under age 30 have iPods/MP3 players. Some 14% of those ages 30-39 have them; and 14% of younger Baby Boomers (ages 40-48) have them.

iPods/MP3 players are gadgets for the upscale. Fully a quarter (24%) of those who live in households earning more than $75,000 have them; 10% of those living in households earning $30,000 to $75,000 have them and 6% of those living in households earning less than $30,000 have them.

Those who use the Internet are four times as likely as non-Internet users to have iPods/MP3 players, probably because Internet users can get much of the music they enjoy online. Fully 15% of Internet users have iPods/MP3 players, compared to 4% of non-Internet users. And the more advanced the Internet user, the mor likely it is that he has an iPod/MP3 player. Those with six years or more of
Internet experience are twice as likely to have them as those who are relative Internet newbies (those with less than three years experience).

Broadband access is strongly associated with ownership of iPods/MP3 players. Some 23% of those with broadband at home have iPods/MP3 players, compared to 9% of those who have dialup connections. And those who have broadband access at home and at work, are the most likely of all to have iPods/MP3 players. Almost a third (31%) of those with broadband all around them have iPods/MP3 players.

16% of parents living with children under 18 in their home have iPods/MP3 players,
compared to 9% of those who don’t have children living at home.
There are a couple of things Rainey and Pew say about what this means:

iPods/MP3 players are popular new gadgets that got a big boost during the holiday
gift-buying season.

iPod/MP3 players are probably being adopted a brisk clip because they are easy to use, because so much music is available on the internet, and because they give people the right to be their own disk jockeys.

People are beginning to adapt them as instruments of social activity. They use them to share songs and they are being drawn to podcasting. Pew doesn’t currently have numbers on podcasting, but it will in mid-March when it gets the results of a new survey that is just going into the field this week.

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