Only 22% of High Schoolers Want To Pay 99¢ A Song
How does the 99¢ song fair among high school students?
Not very well, according to a new study by Piper Jaffray.
Only 22% of the 4,500 participants said they'd consider paying 99¢ for a track. In contrast, 65% use P2P services to get music for free, with a mere 35% indicating that they purchase music from an online store, which is often iTunes.
From Fall of 2007 until now, interest in 99¢ song has averaged out to 22%.
Frankly, it is difficult to believe that such interest will rise anytime soon. As it has been said many times, teens seem to care little about digital downloads.
Surprisingly though, 37% would consider paying $15 for a music subscription, which provides a bit of hope for the Spotify and Rhapsody's of the world.
As you might expect, among high school students Apple has many devotees.
95% use iTunes. 17% own an iPhone, with 37% planning to buy one in the next six months. 22% either own or have a tablet, and 20% intend to buy one in the next six months. 80% own an MP3 player, and of those players 86% are iPods.
The percentage of teens who download music online dropped to 77%.
Click to enlarge.
“Surprisingly though, 37% would consider paying $15 for a music subscription”
Why is this surprising? People (any age) want the biggest bang for their buck, and subscriptions provide that (price, convenience, experience). They can get unlimited songs for the price of – what, maybe 1.5 albums? It sucks for the artist, but for a fan it kicks ass.
We need to be looking at behavior, address the needs of the fan, and deliver the goods in a way that works for both the fan and the artist.
It’s not all about price. If you give your fan an experience they can’t get elsewhere, make it convenient and affordable, you can compete against the “spotifies”.
17% own an iPhone?? Is this a really rich area, or is that just how it is these days
It’s wild how consistent the data is except iTunes gaining more market share
I’m going to guess: Based on a limited sample of young adults I know, the decline in the number of students who download music, authorized or unauthorized, from 82% to 77% over the last 12 months, reflects the ascendency of YouTube streaming as a dominant way to experience music for the younger demographic.
(Because if it’s not that, then they are tuning out.)
Also: according to this survey, the “Limewire shutdown” in late 2010 appears to have had no downward effect on the number of students who do unauthorized P2P file sharing. P2P participation actually surges for Fall 2010 and Spring 2011, relative to the preceding two school years.
I guess the kids are more used to subscription models because the monthly mobile phone bill is a subscription that they have grown up with from an early age. On the contrary, listeners from older age groups that grew up without mobile phones first had to find a way to finance the new gadget that society expected them to have just to remain able to communicate in a manner now considered suitable. The height of the mobile phone boom correlated with the height of the filesharing craze during the Napster days so the cost cutting for the sake of the mobile phone companies happened at the cost of music purchases because free music was readily available.
Personally, I’m a very late starter at using a mobile phone but it did slim down my CD budget. I suppose other people were more inclined to embrace the new technology than me.
The train of thought running in the paragraph above might rail against the notion that “music should be free”. I’d rather say mobile phone communication should be free 😉
Well, considering that nowadays only 3-6 good albums actually come out per year, paying $15 a month seems like a huge rip-off. But, you know, good ol’ fascism has to teach those kids that it is better to rent than to own.
This way artists have less incentive to produce good new music too. B/c everyone is renting everything. No one is “voting” with their purchases directly.
Well, it’s not just new music, it’s old too. Most of the stuff I stream from Pandora is old school metal from the 80’s. Most of the metal out these days sucks, so I don’t listen to it. Most of the stuff I already bought, but it’s easier to turn on Pandora and listen that way, than to dig out the CD.
In all reality, whether you pay a buck for the song, or stream it, you still “rent” it. Nobody owns the music except for the copyright holder, and that’s also part of the problem.
Things like low quality, DRM filled MP3’s make streaming a better option for some.
People are voting with dollars, but there’s not enough bands to vote for. With 75% of artists wanting a label deal, that just means nothing will change, except that streaming will become more popular, artists will go bankrupt, and labels will stay rich and the cycle will keep repeating itself.
It’s not the fans who need to change, it’s the Artists. Adapt or die.
It depends on what you consider good music; what is considered good is subjective.
The music business has two choices…acquiesce to the desires of the kids who won’t pay,or start producing more music for Jazz,Country and R&B fans who want that physical cd in their hands.WE all know fans of those genres don’t like to download,so why don’t we produce what we can sell? There’s no point in producing a product no one wants to pay for.
I sell in iTunes. By far more is happening via streaming. But in case the streaming pay between .005 to .01 per play. With luck I can cover Starbucks on that. Artist need some laws to rein in revenue for streaming.
How do u plan to destribute the cds theres a decline in record stores.Unless u gonna let the bootleggers make the money.And alot of the older generation wanna listen to the same music there kids do.Real R&B is something of the past.U don’t have to know how to sing.Look at BET.Know real R&B anymore.
Stop listening to mainstream music and go indie. You’ll have a better selection of music to choose from.