Paid Movie Downloads Follow Digital Music's Lead

The NPD Group notes similarities between early days of music downloading and digital movie rentals today: "NPD data show that digital music customers tend to be heavier buyers of music CDs, and that pattern is echoed in digital movie rentals. Those consumers paying to rent digital movies from the Web are twice as likely to be heavy movie buyers (i.e., they purchased seven or more movies in the past three months) relative to consumers who acquire movies though PPV [pay-per-view] or VOD [video-on-demand]. In addition, 34 percent also reported being heavy renters (i.e., they rented seven or more movies in the past three months), which is significantly higher than those who used PPV or VOD. "