Towards a music streaming economy – an international market analysis

The music business year 2018 was shaped by the ongoing streaming boom. In April, Spotify has been listed as a stock market company and shortly thereafter the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) reported a 41.1 percent increase of global music streaming revenue to US $6.6bn for 2017. Music streaming has become the most relevant revenue source with a market share of 38 percent in the phonographic industry (compared to physical sales 30 percent, downloads 16 percent, performing rights 14 percent and synchronisation rights 2 percent).

In 2011, the global revenue from music streaming was comparatively low with a market share of 4.1 percent and a revenue of US $600m. However, the countries, for which IFPI provides data, have not developed uniformly as highlighted in the following analysis.

Is Streaming the Next Big Thing? – What Consumers Want

The question if streaming is the next big thing for the music industry will be eventually answered by the music consumers. Several studies were conducted in past few years – most of them commissioned by music industry bodies – to assess the future potential of music streaming. It is essential for music streaming services and the copyright holders (labels and music publishers) if consumers are aware of streaming services, if they are using them frequently and if they are prepared to convert from Freemium to subscription models. Therefore the results of the studies are important indicators for the future development of the music industry. Although they provide different and even contradictory results – due to a different methodology – they help us nevertheless to understand music consumption behaviour in the digital age. In the following I would like to review some of the studies published in the past three years.

How Bad is Music File Sharing? – Part 25

The Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the EU Commission recently published a study entitled “Digital Music Consumption on the Internet: Evidence from Clickstream Data” with remarkable results. The authors, Luis Aguiar and Bertin Martens, concluded that music file sharing as well as music streaming have a significant positive impact on legal music downloads. The study is based on Clickstream data from Nielsen NetView. The database contains all the clicks of 25,000 Internet users in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom for the calendar year 2011. In the following the main finding “(…) that digital music piracy does not displace legal music purchases in digital format” will be further investigated.

Music Experience and Behaviour in Young People in the UK

The study Music Experience and Behaviour in Young People is the third survey of its kind – after 2008 and 2009 – for 2011. After a presentation of the key findings of the study in the 3^rd Vienna Music Business Research Days, it’s now an honour and pleasure to exclusively present the results of the current study on the blog. The 2011 study is based on a comprehensive online survey of 1,888 of 14-24 year olds across the UK. The main conclusion of the current research is “(…) that when it comes to music and young people, everything is different, and yet everything is still the same”; compared to 2008 and 2009.

The key findings of the 2011 study are:

• The computer is no longer their main entertainment hub.
• Digital music collections are still huge.
• Digital music collections still contain 50 percent “free” music.
• Ownership is still important.
• Music is no longer the most popular entertainment type.
• There remains a very clear “value gap”.
• The popularity of file sharing has changed significantly.
• The 14-25 years olds are prepared to pay for digital music.
• But there are still challenges for streaming music online.
• Digital music consumption is still complex.
• They have a clear understanding and grasp of what copyright law is.

Please read further if you want to know more about the research results.