Media Coverage 2003

Canadian Music Network, April 16, 2003
DVD growth shows desire for interactive entertainment

Forty-eight percent of Canadians report that they have at least one DVD player in their household, up from one percent in 1998, according to In The Name Of Cool, an independent consumer trend study on technology, media and entertainment conducted by Toronto’s Solutions Research Group Consultants (SRG).

“It took about five years for DVDs to reach one-in-two households,” says Kaan Yigit, an SRG partner and the study director. “In comparison, CD players and PCs took about 12 years to reach the same level of penetration in Canada. The DVD format is one of several current technologies that responds to a growing demand for interactivity and ‘what I want, when I want convenience’ among Canadian consumers.”

“The collision of moneyed baby boomer parents with a large ‘Gen Y’ population (12 to 24) has produced an environment ideal for rapid adoption of interactive entertainment and communication technologies,” says SRG VP Michele Erskine.

The study found significant increases in the use of many existing technologies, and high interest in a number of new ones:

• Sixty percent of Internet households in Canada have high-speed broadband access (cable modem or DSL), double the rate of broadband access in 2000.
• Broadband access means easy to music (downloaded by seven in 10 Gen Y members) and, increasingly, videos and movies (downloaded by 35 percent of Gen Y members).
• Once downloaded, rich-media content can easily be transferred to a CD or MP3 player. The incidence of CD burning has doubled since 2001, with just under six million Canadians reporting using a CD burner in the last six months.

“We are in the early stages of a radical transformation of the media landscape,” says Yigit. “The survival of traditional media and content providers will depend on their ability to adapt to meet the changing expectations of a new generation of ‘point-and-click’ consumers.”

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