Online Listening Replacing Music Aqusition
Teens age 13-17 bought 19% less music in 2008 than they did in '07 according to a new NPD survey. CD purchases declined 26% and paid digital downloads fell 13% compared with the prior year. 32% of the teens who bought less digital music "expressed discontent" with the music available and 23% said that they already had enough music. 24% of teens said they had cut back all entertainment spending.
The downturn in paid acquisition was also matched by a downturn in the number of tracks downloaded from P2P networks which also fell 6% in 2008. The number of teens borrowing music, either to rip to a computer or burn to a CD, fell by 28%.
WHY BUY WHEN YOU CAN LISTEN FREE?
In contrast, NPD’s music tracking surveys noted sharp jumps in teen’s usage of online and satellite radio listening in 2008. 52% of teens istened to online radio in 2008, compared to 34% in 2007. Downloading or listening to music on social networks also saw a large increase from 26% in 2007 to 46% in 2008. (more)
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When you’ve made a friend through an online community (the modern version of a pen pal) and want to play them some music, you can most easily do that by sending them a link to a stream from an online community, usually myspace or youtube. When friends don’t meet anymore in person, but over the web only, purchasing of music becomes less important, because the music is there, too. So does removing a stream generate interest in buying a song? Not necessarily, because it also subtracts considerably from the song’s popularity.
That makes it look like all the free stuff that’s around as officially released promotional material is now beginning to add to the current deflation in music, as there is so much music and so little time, to say it rather drastically.