If you are like me, incorporating some form of music as part of your daily routine adds to good health and overall positive 'Mo-Jo.' Unfortunately, as we all get older and go through the many phases of life, priorities shift and the time commitment to keep abreast of the latest and greatest music falls lower on the list. Then we wake up one day, and realize music is no longer a part of our daily life aside from the short commute to and from work. This doesn't include the reality - how out of touch we become with the latest and greatest artists.
How depressing.
On October 23, 2001 the iPod came out. Shortly thereafter, we all went through the process (or watched our kids do it) of learning how to 'rip' our CD collection into digital music (MP3, AAC, etc.) stored locally on our computers. We were then in complete mobile music bliss taking our iPods to the gym and enjoying our old collections of music. Thank you Apple for becoming successful at selling us these devices; we love them. By the end of Q3 2009, Apple sold 218,048,000 iPods. A big number.
In 2000, the Music Genome Project birthed with the most sophisticated taxonomy of musical information ever collected. It represents over eight years of analysis by a trained team of musicologists, and spans everything all the way back to the Renaissance and Classical music. Today many people (including me) use and love the successful commercial-free Internet Radio service called Pandora, based upon the Music Genome Project. Although I could not get my hands on public data showing the exact amount of registered (web and iPhone, Palm, Blackberry, Android, etc.) users of Pandora, I can assure you the numbers are quite large. There is another highly-popular Internet Radio service called Last.FM, which provides a similar or improved (depending on who you talk with) unlimited genre/artist-specific music experience. Both these free (ad-supported) or low cost (roughly $30-$40/year) paid services allow users to choose genre or artist-based channels to enjoy on a computer, mobile device, or home music system (ex. Sonos.) Net net, Internet Radio services are in strong growth mode and building significant and loyal audiences.
So, who still buys and downloads music on their iPod and iPhone?
The short answer is - a lot of people. However, the recent digital music numbers from Nielsen Sound Scan are not showing healthy growth. More specifically, digital music sales is in double digit decline in comparison to previous years. Some argue the culprits being the latest variable pricing strategy and depressed ringtone sales. Plus, CD sales also continue to drop, fast.
Steve Jobs stands by his strategy that people like to own their music, rather than rent. Looking at the numbers - he does make a good point. As of this post, iTunes is currently available in 23 countries with 8.5 billion songs sold, and 100 million credit card billing accounts. Jobs claims iTunes is the largest music retailer in the world. To that end they continue to improve iTunes with the recent launch of Version 9.
Although I have over 100 gigs of digital music, I dislike having to constantly choose songs or albums to play. Actually, that's why radio works. Jobs solution to this is "Genius Mixes," a feature included in recent versions of iTunes that (if you allow it to) collects information about your digital collection of music. It then runs your data against the 27 million libraries (or 54 billion songs) submitted to iTunes through Genius to customize a playlist suggestion specifically for you based upon the available music you have on your computer. It's actually pretty good.
Even with the new feature improvements to iTunes, I expect digital music download sales growth to slow down because of the growing popularity of commercial-free Internet Radio. Having almost every song available on my mobile phone, on my home stereo, or at my computer - commercial free for $36/year is a compelling proposition especially since I don't have to purchase songs individually, actively discover new music, manage or store downloaded files, or play DJ. To that end, I suspect, over time, you may see Apple use Genius in some way to offer a subscription service.
What do you think - buy or rent?
How to Use Audio in Business Using Videos In Your Website
0 comments:
Post a Comment