“Two separate reports offer contrasting opinion on the health of the digital music market,” Jonny Evans reports for Macworld UK.
“Forrester Resarch analyst, Josh Bernoff has revealed figures that claim Apple sells 20 songs through iTunes for each iPod sold. He makes the assumption that this figure — which has remained relatively static historically — represents all legitimate music consumption by iPod users,” Evans reports. “Meanwhile, Akamai has published a global glance at the traffic levels across 40 digital music stores, including iTunes.”
“The Forrester figures aren’t based on actual sales, but on information Bernoff has been able to estimate that is based on credit card records,” Evans reports. “Over the past 12 months, 3.2 per cent of US households with internet access have purchased songs through iTunes, but only about $17 worth, his report claims. He also says the number of iTunes sales has slipped 58 per cent since January 2006.”
Evans reports, “Akamai’s report deals with known levels of activity on music websites. These contrasting results indicate that interest in digital music services continues to grow.”
“Akamai also conducted a survey of online consumers to better understand their digital music habits. Respondents ranged in age from 19 to 68 with a survey base of 200 people, 58 per cent female and 41 per cent male,” Evans reports. “The survey showed that 86 per cent of respondents own a portable music device and 76 per cent spend $1-$5 on music downloads every week. 82 per cent of music lovers prefer a download-to-own service to anything else, and 42 per cent of customers are loyal to one digital music service.”
Full article here.
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Akamai Net Usage Index for Digital Music measures real-time global consumption of online music – December 11, 2006
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