The NPD Group has released a new study (More CD Buyers Try Legal Digital Music Services, NPD Finds) on CD purchasing, authorized downloading, and P2P use.

The main spin of the study appears to be that, for those consumers who buy CDs, 3 out of 4 dentists... no wait, make that 1 out of 20 purchasers also pay to download music. In other words, if you buy music in stores, you may buy music online. (duh?)

More noteworthy, I think, is another set of results buried at the bottom of the press release:

According to NPD there were other notable differences in CD purchase behavior, depending on how consumers used specific online music services. CD buyers who also used an online music subscription service, such as Rhapsody, in the past twelve months purchased an average of 11 CDs last year; those who had paid for a music download from legal download site, like iTunes, purchased 10 CDs; those who used a P2P file-sharing site purchased eight CDs; and those who did not download or stream music from the Web bought six CDs.

If one assumes an average CD price of $12, then the average P2P user in their survey is paying the RIAA labels $96 per year for music they already can get for free. Who says you can't compete?