In the UK, if you’re a kid between the ages of 14 and 24, the number is about 800 tracks, and it accounts for half of your music, a new British study has found:

Teenagers and students have an average of more than 800 illegally copied songs each on their digital music players, the largest academic survey of young people’s music ownership has found.

The average digital music player carries 1,770 songs, meaning that 48 per cent of the collection is copied illegally. The proportion of illegally downloaded tracks rises to 61 per cent among 14 to 17-year-olds. In addition, 14 per cent of CDs (one in seven) in a young person’s collection are copied.

(Link via The Daily Swarm.) One would assume that British kids are less technologically attuned than U.S. ones and that the figures would be higher over here. (On the other hand, music is traditionally more expensive in Britain; will investigate broadband penetration there vs. here.)

Read further and you can see this is part of an industry push to drum up support for either subscription-based music services or a de facto tax on ISPs, to compensate the labels for the money lost to file-sharing:

British Music Rights [a UK artists group] argues that the solution partly lies in developing new legal services that make breaking copyright unappealing.

[Group capo Fergal] Sharkey [yes, that Fergal Sharkey] said: “The positive message is that 80 per cent of downloaders said they would pay for a legal subscription-based service, and they told us they would be willing to pay more than a few pounds a month.”

British Music Rights declined to release the exact amount but it is believed to be about £10 a month.

The organisation is trying to help the record companies to persuade internet service providers to sign up to a new type of music service, in which vast catalogues of songs are available for an add-on fee to a broadband package. Agreements with providers such as Virgin Media are expected in the next few weeks.

In France last week, Orange, France Telecom’s mobile arm, reached agreement with all four main record companies to provide downloads of more than a million songs to mobile phones and home computers for ¤12 (£9.40) a month.

Music sales have been falling steadily and the big companies are desperate to strike subscription-based agreements rather than rely on one-off CD and download sales.