Study: Music Fans Prefer Ownership vs. Streaming
In a new research study concluded by eMusic, and administered by Insight Research Group, 92% of music fans are concluded to prefer they own their music rather than stream it – citing unlimited playback and file security as key determining factors.
However, steaming music was found to be an important gateway to music purchases. The study found that 71% of consumers use streaming to discover and listen to new music in order to gauge whether it’ll be worth purchasing. However, only 13% of the general population chooses to pay for music steaming services, while 20% of more dedicated music consumers pay to stream music.
Combining Ownership With Access
Combining ownership with access, roughly 40% of all music fans say they would store digital music files that they already own in a cloud-digital locker so they can listen to them anywhere.
This quantitative survey for eMusic occurred during August – September 2011. Respondents were online music buyers nationwide, including eMusic members. Sample size consisted of 1000 male and female respondents between 18-64 years old.
This post is by regular Hypebot contributor, musician, and music marketer Hisham Dahud (@hishamdahud)
This result of 92% pro ownership is no surprise really. Hypebot has always been very much of an advocate for artists to “own” their fans’ contact data and social communication channels. So it’s no surprise at all that fans know music can become unavailable at the click of a mouse these days.
However, there might still be some great business opportunities in backup services for digital and physical music archiving for fans who cannot or do not want to organize their backups by themselves.
I feel as though this is a little misleading. It seems you’re trying argue that this new study shows a change in consumer media consumption but I don’t think the results imply any difference from people ‘owning’ CD’s after listening to them ‘streaming’ on the Radio. Isn’t that basically how music has always been for the past half century?
But in which direction is this moving? Accessibility with control is just now emerging…
There is no radio anymore. People meed a place to hear music before they buy. This has been the hurdle that traditional systems continue to ignore and the void that streamig fills.