Report: Kids love mobile music...just don't ask them to pay

According to a new report issued by British digital media magazine New Media Age and online learning company Intuitive Media, kids are avid consumers of mobile media services--but when it comes to actually paying for mobile music, their enthusiasm plummets. In a survey of 1500 schoolchildren ages eight to 13, NMA and Intuitive found 29 percent of users admitted to sharing mobile music downloads illegally with friends via Bluetooth, with 45 percent of the remaining respondents admitting they would like to share music in such a fashion.

"Music sharing on the Internet was identified by the industry as one of the biggest threats they've faced in recent years and this research shows that mobile has got the potential to exacerbate those problems," said Intuitive Media co-founder Robert Hart in a prepared statement. "The children are not aware they are doing anything illegal. Technologies like Bluetooth have been around for a while but it's only now when the handsets are becoming powerful music devices that this problem has really arisen."

Among the NMA/Intuitive study group, 30 percent of children who listen to music on portable devices do so primarily over their mobile phones. "With the influx of new high-end handsets that we'd expect to come on stream over Christmas, we should expect mobile music swapping to become a truly mass market phenomenon in a matter of weeks or months," NMA mobile editor Justin Pearse said in a prepared statement.

For more on the findings:
- read the report

Related article:
- Kids want more from mobile music services