The next time you sit down to copy songs on to your digital music player from your friend’s CDs or are sharing songs via e-mail, you’d better know that you are amongst 96 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds or 89 per cent of 14 to 17 year olds who are doing so and that too illegally.

 A recent survey conducted by the University of Hertfordshire has left the music industry in a state of shock after revealing that an average digital music player or iPod contains over 842 songs that are illegally copied. The research shows that over fifty per cent of the 14 to 24 year old population was willing to share all the music on their hard-drives, allowing their friends to copy more than thousand songs at any given point of time.

 To give a rough estimate of how wide spread this practice is, this academic study of the younger generations music ownership reveals that amongst the 1770 songs that an average iPod or digital music player has ,about 48 per cent are copied. The proportion of tracks that are downloaded illegally catapults to 61 per cent in the 14 to 17 year old age group. In addition to this, one in seven CDs in an average youth’s collection is copied.

 Speaking on the issue, the ex-lead vocalist of the Undertones and present chief executive of British Music Rights said that while in his time it was the radio that he taped off songs from, today’s situation is beyond expectations. Due to this unlawful activity, the music sales are suffering and the companies are over their heads trying to remove their reliance on one time CD and download sales.