Twitter Users Buy More Music Online Than Average Surfers, Study Says

Market research firm The NDP Group has issued a report that says Web users who are active on social networking site Twitter are more engaged with music and, more importantly, tend to be more likely to purchase music online.

The firm bases these conclusions on less than 4,000 completed surveys for its quarterly music-acquisition study.

First, the engagement: according to the report, one-third of surveyed Twitter users listened to music on a social networking site, 41% listened to online radio (compared to 22% among all Web users) and 39% watched a music video online (versus 25% among all Web users) during the first quarter. Twitter users are also said to be twice to visit services like MySpace Music and Pandora than average Web users.

Music buyers’ awareness of Twitter was 67% in the first quarter, compared with 52% of general Web users; 12% of music buyers said they used Twitter in the past three months, versus 8% overall. Some 33% of Twitter users purchased a CD recently, compared with 23% of Web users.

Twitter users also seem to be more keen on purchasing music online, according to NDP: 34% bought a digital download, compared with 16% of general Web users. Apparently, they buy more on average too, 77% more so than users who are not on Twitter (yet).

Russ Crupnick, entertainment industry analyst for NPD, commented:

“[This] study shows that there are segments of consumers who are more actively integrating Twitter as a key tool for communicating and networking. Based on their music-purchasing history, active Twitter users are simply worth more to record labels and music retailers than those who are not using Twitter.”

We recently wrote about artist duo TRV$DJAM offering a download of their new mixtape free of charge in exchange of a tweet, and how Twitter helped Universal Motown Republic put one of its new artists, Asher Roth, on the map. You can find a lot of music-related applications tied to Twitter in this post.

(Via @gleonhard and DMW)