According to a new Jupiter research study, “a combination of disinterest and unnecessary hurdles” is currently stopping most mobile phone users from using mobile music downloads.
Out of the 1800 respondents, two thirds (a bit over 66 percent) said there was nothing the carriers could do to make them want to buy music on their phones while 28 percent said they were interested in ringtones. The remaining 14 percent were interested in purchasing full tracks.
Of those who could not be conned into purchasing tracks, the price of the downloads was the main barrier. Many said they would reconsider if the prices were equal to those of say Amazon or iTunes but many carriers charge a huge premium “to offset the extra network Bandwidth costs.”
“Absent some exciting new business models, music labels and carriers will continue to cede most of the digital-music turf to Apple,” Jupiter says.
Besides price issues, those polled were also frustrated by the inaccessibility of the music, with many finding it very hard to find or download using a phone. Many also complained about ridiculous DRM restrictions on the music as well as the quality.
Result for: itunes
In January, Last.FM began offering music streaming on-demand instead of by simple genre or keyword searches. Three times a day users can listen to a track of their choosing regardless of artist or genre.
With the format change also came affiliate partnerships with iTunes, Amazon and 7Digital that allows Last.FM users to click through from any song they are listening to and purchase the tracks from said affiliates.
It seems the recent change in format has led to substantial added sales, a 119 percent overall increase in cd and download sales through the affiliates.
Martin Stiksel, Last.fm’s founder, feels the stats demonstrate that free on-demand music will encourage physical purchases and that the music industry should adopt more on demand models. “In just over two months it’s become clear that people will buy CDs and downloads if they get access to the kind of service we offer. No one else can give music fans this amount of music for free — but more importantly also drive their discovery, as we do through our unique recommendation engine. That’s why people are sticking around on Last.fm — minutes spent on site are up 118% month-on-month — and discovering new music to listen to and buy,” he added.
Lets hope the trend continues.
Result for: itunes
According to a new analysis by The NPD Group, Amazon’s MP3 store is having little to no effect on the flourishing success of the iTunes store.
The study revealed that only a measly 10 percent of all Amazon MP3 users are iTunes converts and that the majority are new to direct digital downloads. NPD entertainment analyst Russ Crupnick feels that the report shows that the new stores don’t necessarily draw customers away from the behemoth that is iTunes.
Amazon currently sits in fourth among all US music sales and “claims just a tenth of the sales volume at its online store,” the study adds. Amazon is behind Best Buy, Wal-Mart and iTunes and will need to “significantly increase its digital sales rate to surpass the higher-ranked stores” reads the study.
Amazon has seen its store grow on a couple of chief principles. It sells some songs for cheaper (89 cents) than iTunes, all tracks are DRM-free, and the store can be accessed on any modern operating system.
