Mad but true: 60 per cent of 16- to 24-year-olds would rather go without sex than without music.

To qualify that, 60 per cent of British 16- to 24-year-olds deem music more important to them than sex, based on a survey of 1,000 people conducted by a record company that wanted to learn about attitudes to music.

I blame the parents.

This was the headline-grabbing detail lifted from the survey by London-based Marrakesh Records (www.marrakeshrecords.com). But it was the other questions and answers further down the list that shed more light on just how irredeemably banjaxed the music industry is.

Even given that a sample group is not as rigorous and scientific as it could be, the survey is important in that it focuses on the age group most emotionally connected to music and who spend the most amount of time and money on it. This is the demographic the labels have in mind when they make AR decisions and decide on their marketing spend.

The survey found that 70 per cent of the group habitually buy CDs, while 52 per cent buy downloads. Most people first discover the music they buy on radio stations, followed by friends’ recommendations. Music TV channels are somewhere down the list. In terms of websites for checking out new bands, YouTube is the preferred choice, followed by MySpace – with bands’ own websites way down the choice of options.

Given that this is a vital demographic (in terms of growing the industry) the group’s attitude to piracy is enlightening if scary: more than 70 per cent do not feel guilty about downloading music for free from the Internet. Further, 61 per cent feel they should not have to pay for music at all.

It used to be that, with cassette tapes and CDs, you had to put a bit of effort into copying material. But now file-sharing and peer-to-peer content swapping is ridiculously simple.

It was always clear (to everyone except the industry itself) that once the digitial genie was out of the bottle there was no going back. This is despite all the threats of legal action and having one’s broadband subscription switched off.

The surveyed age group do have their own ideas of how much music should cost. Sure, the survey shows that 43 per cent of the group’s music is not paid for, but, pushed and prodded a bit, they say they would pay for music if prices were more reasonable. They felt that £6.50 (€7.25) for a physical CD and £3.90 (€4.35) for an album download were fair, while a single download should only cost 39 pence (43 cent).

Those surveyed are absolutely correct in their finding that that the album download should be about half the price of a physical CD, but this doesn’t happen in the real world of music pricing. Regarding singles, everyone knows they are loss leaders and should be drastically slashed in price.

As for YouTube, the company and the labels remain in “discussions” over copyright, with important music videos being yanked from the site every day.