Music Is The Fastest Growing Mobile Activity
According to the data figures from a recent comScore report, listening to music via a mobile device was the fastest growing activity by mobile subscribers. In fact, the growth rate of mobile listening dwarfed that of other mobile activities including playing games, accessing social networking sites, and browsing the web. The study reported key trends in the U.S. mobile phone industry during the three-month average period ending in June 2012, while surveying more than 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers.
While this accelerated growth rate is the seemingly good news, on the other hand, mobile music's percentage share of content usage still remains the lowest of any:
Click image to enlarge:
Source: comScore
Also included in the study were findings that Google Android ranked as the top smartphone platform with 51.6 percent market share (up 0.6 percentage points), while Apple’s share increased 1.7 percentage point.
In a separate study released earlier this year by IE Market Research, Vice President Nizar Assanie predicts that mobile music would be the fastest growing sector in the mobile entertainment industry.
"Among different categories of mobile entertainment, we expect that mobile music will see the biggest growth in revenues over the next five years,” she said. “We forecast that global mobile music revenues will increase from $9 billion in 2011 to $18 billion in 2016."
While comScore couldn't be reached for comment, their data leaves us wondering what percentage of that mobile music growth accounts for streaming versus listening to downloads.
With Spotify alone claiming three million U.S. users in just one year's time, and Amazon's recent launch of an upgraded Cloud Player, one would imagine that the skew is going to continue leaning towards streaming as we move forward. However, many consumers continue to prefer that they own their music, citing unlimited playback and file security as key determining factors.
MORE: A Whole New World: The Evolution of Mobile Music
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Hisham Dahud is a Senior Analyst for Hypebot.com. Additionally, he is the head of Business Development for Fame House and an independent musician. Follow him on Twitter: @HishamDahud
Thank you for the great content!
You are absolutely correct that music is the fastest growing mobile activity and many people or company is creating their own music application in their mobile from mobile apps development team. It is really a very nice post with very nice information. Keep sharing.
I think this is kind of obvious as the trajectory for mobile marketing is on the upward spiral. However I don’t think the majority of artists have truly embraced mobile yet. I’m working on it.