Music piracy=teen music lovers@iPod

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Music piracy has been adopted in a major way by young people, for a new study has revealed that teenagers have an average of over 800 illegally copied songs on their iPods or MP3 players.

A team at Hertfordshire University has also found that half of 14 to 24-year-olds were willing to share all the music on their computers, enabling others to copy hundreds sometimes thousands of songs at a time.

The scale of illegal music copying disclosed by what has been dubbed as the largest survey of youth music ownership has surprised the industry, which is struggling to cope with free-falling CD sales, 'The Times' reported.

Feargal Sharkey, former lead singer of The Undertones and now Chief Executive of British Music Rights, said: "I was one of those people who went around the back of the bike shed with songs I had taped off the radio the night before.

But this totally dwarfs that, and anything we expected." The average digital music player carries 1,770 songs, meaning that 48% of the collection is actually copied illegally, according to the survey.

Among 14 to 17-year-olds, the proportion of illegally downloaded tracks rises to 61% and 14% of CDs in a young person's collection are copied. Illegal copying in some form is undertaken by 96% of 18 to 24-year-olds surveyed, falling to 89% of those aged 14-17.