The Entertainment Retailers Association trade body commissioned GfK to carry out the research, partly as a means to publicise its recently launched MP3 official 'benchmark'. The figure is skewed by the fact that 75 per cent of the MP3 players were phones. However, at 8 million units sales of dedicated MP3 players still matched sales of CD players.

“Never in the history of the music business have we seen a format take off like this before. There is now no doubt that MP3 is the fastest-growing music format of all time, faster than vinyl, cassette or CD,” said Entertainment Retailers Association chairman Russel Coultart.