Mac Users more likely to buy music online than PC Users

A new survey by market researcher, NPD, shows that 50% of all owners of Apple's Mac computer's paid to download music, while just 16% of Microsoft Windows based computer owners did so in the third quarter of this year. Those same Mac users are also more likely to purchase compact discs, the study finds.

"There's still a cultural divide between Apple consumers and the rest of the computing world, and that's especially apparent when it comes to the way they interact with music," said Russ Crupnick, an analyst with NPD.

In addition to purchasing CDs and downloading music, Mac users are also more likely to listen to music and watch videos on their MP3-players and computers. While 34 percent of Mac users had uploaded music to their MP3 players, just 16 percent of PC users had done the same.

Mac users are also much more likely to listen to music files on their computers (56 percent) than are PC users (31 percent), the study noted.

"At this point in the game, it's the growing base of Apple consumers that are the industry's low-hanging fruit when it comes to converting from physical to digital music," Crupnick said.

Apple computers represent roughly 5 percent of the computing industry, according to Gartner research, with the rest being PC users.