The Wharton School takes at look at the digital music biz for 2004:
- Indications are strong that the companies behind the services have reason to think that profits can be made in online music. iTunes sold 20 million tracks in its first seven months of operation. Rhapsody's 250,000 subscribers paid to listen to 28 million songs in October, up from 11 million in June. Between June and November, music lovers bought 7.7 million songs online, but only 4 million single-song CDs at stores.
The future looks good, too. Jupiter Research expects online music sales to grow to $3.3 billion by 2008. Forrester Research, for its part, expects that within just four years online music will account for 33% of the music industry’s sales.
But behind the vaunted successes and the optimistic predictions lurk at least two big questions: Which online music vendors, among the nearly one dozen operating today, have found the business model that will guarantee they will be around in 2008 to share the profits? Can the for-fee services make a dent in the billions of musical tracks exchanged, at no cost, on pirate networks?
The online music business models now being used include:
* The a la carte approach, favored by the likes of iTunes. Customers can buy individual tracks for 79 cents to $1.20 or albums for $9.99 and up, and buy as few or as many tracks as they want. They can, after downloading music to their hard drives, also burn it to CDs, copy it to portable music players or, if they have the right equipment, stream it around the house by way of their existing entertainment centers.
* The subscription model. Customers pay a monthly fee and then download a specified number of songs each month. For $9.99 a month, emusic lets its customers download 40 songs and use them in whatever way the buyers want. For $14.99, customers get 65 songs.
* The streaming model, such as the one used by RealNetwork's Rhapsody. Music lovers pay a monthly fee, then listen to as many songs a month as they can stand. Downloading is extra, usually under a dollar a track.
.jpg?t=20120527181101)
Article comments
1 - arik181
I do believe that there is room in the American music market for streaming services. I do not believe that I, personally will see streaming as my primary means of obtaining music any time in the near future, nor any time in the next ten years.
Portability is too big an issue for me. I like having the same music in my car that I have in my house. I like carrying an mp3 player when I go running.
I also, being an indoctrinate of American culture in many ways, agree with what Jobs says about ownership. I own close to 900 CDs. I am not averse to the idea of switching media, but I do need to "own" the music that I purchase. If RealNetworks goes under in 20 years for some reason, I don't want my music going with it (witness the destruction of the mp3.com library).
I will want to own the music that I listen to until the day that truly ubiquitous network computing is a reality, or I carry my music around in a chip in my brain.
2 - jhgjmhj
yo small lik panccaks dud
3 - hubalabublabub
this smells like pooo dudes later
4 - DUDESssssssa
where are my pants