Category: mobile music
Japanese consumers turning away from mobile music formats in ever greater numbers
Music buyers in Japan are continuing to confound the rest of world, with digital sales falling and physical-format sales rising. Recent figures published by Japanese music trade association the RIAJ show that the once loved mobile music formats are continuing to suffer big drops in sales. Internet sales are growing but nowhere near fast enough to stem Japan’s digital-music collapse. Continue reading
The recorded-music industry is still a US$40 billion business
Over the past decade or so, the assessment of the recorded-music industry has shifted from retail sales to trade value. The complexities and the growing number of business models involved in the delivery of digital music, coupled with unknown retail markups, make quantifying the retail value of recorded-music sales speculative at best. But the enduring appeal of ring tones and ring-back tones in some less-developed countries suggests that the size of the global retail pie has not changed; there are just more players taking a slice. Continue reading
Uniformity makes it tough on music-streaming startups
Mobile is the value-add that attracts the highest premium in streaming services. According to sources at the US streaming service Rdio, the majority of its subscribers take the top-premium mobile-access plan. Continue reading
Japanese consumers are the biggest music buyers
It is no surprise to hear that the US is the largest music market in the world. Despite sales crumbling in the last couple of years, the US still accounts for around 30% of global spending on recorded-music. What is a little surprising is the fact that the US is only the 10th largest market in the world in terms of per capita spending on music. Despite trailing the US by more than US$2 billion last year in the retail value of recorded-music sales, Japan was the world leader for per capita music spending. Continue reading
An update on mobile apps and the music industry
Most mobile music services use pay-per-track and subscription-based pricing models, but some operators have started offering music services bundled with their mobile subscriptions. Full tracks are sometimes thrown in as a “free” extra to motivate people to take out a mobile subscription or data plan or to top up their prepaid credit. An example of the latter is Orange’s Monkey prepaid plan in the UK, in which users get free music for topping up as little as £5 (US$7.75).
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