People who can't find music they like on the radio are listening online, and those people are more likely to visit a store or online music retailer to purchase CDs of what they've heard, according to a study released Thursday.

The survey, commissioned by the Digital Media Association, found that 60 percent of heavy music listeners — those who listen to more than 10 hours per week and spent more than $25 on music in the previous six months — who listen to music on the Internet, in downloaded or streamed formats, said they ended up buying the music they had heard online.

"It says that people are going to the Web to find music that they can't find on traditional radio, and when they find it, they're buying it," DiMA Executive Director John Potter said. "The fact that they've downloaded a track doesn't stop them from buying the CD."

The study, commissioned by 30 companies involved in webcasting music

— including sonicnet.com's parent company, MTV Interactive, —

and one unidentified major label, was released the same day Recording

Industry Association of America President Hilary Rosen, Motion Picture

Association of America President Jack Valenti and others testified

before Congress about the state of webcasting and its effects on the

traditional entertainment industry.

In its ongoing copyright infringement battle against file-sharing

software company Napster Inc., the RIAA presented a study compiled by

music sales tracker SoundScan that claims use of Napster's software has led to sharp drops in CD sales within one mile of university campuses, specifically those schools that Wired magazine recognized as being particularly well-connected to the Internet.

Napster CEO Hank Barry responded to the RIAA study Tuesday, saying, "The report shows that a minor decline in college store purchases happened from 1998 to 1999 — before Napster even existed. There is nothing to suggest that Napster in late 1999 and early 2000 had any impact [on] the course of sales."

Potter criticized the SoundScan study for examining only a small sample of a very specific audience — Napster-using college students with free access to high-speed university Internet connections — and said that the DiMA study, which queried 16,000 individuals ages 13 to 39, is more representative of the whole of the Internet community.

"Perhaps the implication is that Napster is much more threatening when

you have young kids with ... free T1 lines and free servers at

universities," Potter said. "That's a real different context from people who have jobs and go to work and live in the world. ... There's a lot of downloading that has nothing to do with Napster. ... People like getting free music, and lo and behold, when they get it and they like it, they buy it."

RIAA spokesperson Amy Weiss said the DiMA study has few implications for the RIAA's claims that Napster harms legitimate music industry sales.

"There is a huge difference between promotional uses authorized by

copyright holders and wholesale piracy, which our studies show

significantly hurts CD sales," Weiss said. "These are apples and

oranges. ... If you're going to be able to download music off of Napster and burn it onto CD, it's different from streaming and then going out and buying a CD."

The SoundScan study showed that retail CD sales within one mile of wired university campuses rose in 1998, but dropped to 13 percent below 1997 figures by the first quarter of 2000.

Potter said SoundScan discounted the effect of other sorts of music

distribution on smaller retailers.

"They're talking about decreases since 1997," Potter said. "You can

blame that on ... the fact that people are buying at Amazon.com, CDNOW

and Barnesandnoble.com, as well as at Tower and big-box outlets such as Target and Best Buy, instead of at their local college record stores."

Weiss said online CD sales make up only 1 percent of total retail sales.

DiMA's figures — which include research conducted by Yankelovich

Partners independently, as well as on DiMA's behalf — also suggest that Internet music sources are filling a void in radio programming, left by the conglomeration and homogenization of many major radio stations under a scant few corporate umbrellas.

Nearly half of the users surveyed said they look to the Internet to find music that is not available on traditional radio.

Public Enemy rapper

color="#003163">Chuck D, who runs hip-hop Web sites

rapstation.com and bringthenoise.com, said he believes Napster-type file sharing is the radio of the future.

"As far as I'm concerned, when I look at the [traditional] radio

situation, they say, 'Well, we got stations that play rap music and

hip-hop,' " the rapper said. "Well, yeah, but you're playing a sliver of what's [out there]."