Research and Markets has released a market report that claims that by 2010 at least a third of the UK spending on recorded music will come from legal downloading. The growth potential, it believes, is in the live music market. Only 18% of adults attend concerts regularly, it states. (What defines regularly? In the US, only 2% of the population attends three or more concerts per year.)

This report should help clear up any doubts as to the longevity of the CD format. Back in January of 2004, CNN.com tweaked the conclusions in a Forrester report and came up with this statement: "Music downloads will render compact discs all but obsolete in the next five years." What the report actually said was that digital downloads would comprise 33% of the U.S. recorded music market by 2008, which looks like an overly optimistic target.

The timing of the Research and Markets report coincides with a report from Telephia on over-the-air downloads, as reported today by Digital Music News. It found that despite growth in over-the-air downloads to cellular phones, "subscribers still rely heavily on their personal computers as the central hub of their music activity." Those personal computers have disc drives. People put CDs in those disc drives. And given the lack of rights management on CDs, consumers have an extra incentive to choose CDs over downloads hampered by DRM.

In March of this year, Forrester research predicted digital music will make up 36% of the European music market's value in 2011.