NPD has developed an exciting new market information subscription service, providing the consumer information the music industry needs to understand today's online music marketplace. The new service provides a 360-degree view of digital music behavior that covers how consumers acquire digital music and what they do with it.

Complimenting NPD's MusicWatch tracking service, which monitors consumers' acquisition of physical music products, the new MusicWatch Digital service addresses the music industry's pressing questions about digital music acquisition, digital listening and digital exportation of music. It helps music companies and retailers assess the size and trends of digital music use on a monthly and seasonal basis and track the growth and impact of online music distribution. MusicWatch Digital is the only music tracking product that provides complete demographic, geographic and ownership data on more than 40,000 online panelists and household members, which are then projected to the overall Internet universe.

Consumers' acquisition and use of digital music is leading to a restructuring of the music industry business model. To help industry leaders determine how best to market their products in the evolving digital world, NPD MusicWatch Digital addresses these key questions:

• What are the best strategies for effective marketing in the evolving digital world?
• How are emerging sources for digital music performing?
• How can companies optimize strategies for physical and digital distribution of single tracks and albums?
• To what extent do digital files substitute for physical copies?
• What rights and management rules make sense for digital files in terms of burning or sharing?
• Do listeners of different music genres interact with technology similarly?
• Do demographic groups embrace downloading equally?
• Are efforts to decrease piracy effective?
• How does consumer behavior change over the lifecycle of an album?
• How effective are digital pricing and promotion strategies?

For more information about how NPD MusicWatch can help your business, contact Russ Crupnick at 516-625-4827 or e-mail russ_crupnick@npd.com.