A recent University of Reading study finds that 75% of students polled prefer downloading music to buying hard copies or even streaming, which may speak to a sort of splitting of the difference for how younger audiences view digital music. If there was ever any debate on whether people still want to “own” music, this bit of information sheds a little bit more light.
The popularity of streaming sites like LastFM
, Pandora and Spotify had a lot of nobs who think about these things wondering if we’d eventually hit a point wher nobody owns and keeps any form of music—be that physical CDs and records or digital files. The idea was that as broadband and wireless technology improved and the masses moved to smart phones we’d eventually just have all music available on demand via streaming tools. But is that what anyone wants?
According to the survey of 10,000 university students, “75 percent said they wouldn't pay for a music-streaming service but would rather use sites such as iTunes to download and keep tracks on hard drives or MP3 players.”
The survey is cited in a press release apparently issued on behalf of TunesPro.com, a new download site hoping to compete with iTunes. Their angle seems to be to undercut on price. The press release quotes a spokesman for TunesPro:
We keep our prices low and concentrate of making money through volume sales. Currently we charge 19c per song and offer a further 10% when a whole album is purchased. We believe this will attract the younger users away from iTunes, which charge almost 6 times more than we do.
So for now it appears many younger audiences still want to possess something for their money. Will that hold as the ease and cost for bandwidth decreases and becomes more widespread? Will you still want to “hold” your music?
Comments
Looks like people want to own music, rather than trust that it will be available via services like Spotify. When you own your music and have it on your computer, you can sync it with your iPod or, like me, stream it to your phone wirelessly with Didiom or Orb.
I'll never pay for a MP3, so paying for streaming makes even less sense to me.