…but we like a nice shiny new bit of streaming.
Music business and technology blog Hypebot has commented on the results of a recent survey on the UK digital music market. From them, we can draw two conclusions: in the UK, we still have an attachment to the physical reward for buying music, and we’d rather stream licensed music for free than download it illegally.
The survey, by The Leading Question and Music Ally, found that 73 percent of music fans are still happy buying CDs rather than downloading, including 66 percent of 14-18 year olds. 59 percent of those surveyed (a sample of 1000) still listen to CDs every day.
If I learned one thing at university, it’s that moving music fans away from something they can hold in their hands to a piece of music with nothing attached to it is more difficult than it sounds. Music fans – and I can totally relate to this – are addicted to the physical artefact. In other words, we like having CDs (or LPs, I guess) and we like geeky stuff like liner notes and so on. I am a child of the original Napster generation, but I still have over 500 CDs alphabetically arranged on a bookcase. I bought a CD only three hours ago. Why? Because I can touch it, read it, move it. It’s part of a collection.
Furthermore, fans who subscribe to a paid service (like Napster or, in my case, Spotify) still buy CDs:
“Those who are paying for a digital music subscription service (such as Napster or Musicstation) spend more on CDs each month than most music fans (£16.87 per month compared to £11.37).”
That also puts me in a category of music streamers which spends more money than most music fans, which does not surprise me in the slightest. Ever since my favourite band at the time, Metallica, went after Napster, I’ve argued that my online musical activity merely served as a discovery engine for CD purchases. This remains true today.
Which leads me nicely on to the other main finding from the survey, which is that “UK Music fans are turning their backs file-sharing in favor of streaming and other ways of sharing music”. Again, this maps perfectly onto my own experience. Since signing up to Spotify I haven’t given Limewire so much as a second thought.
And the crux is this: if I want to listen to a particular track, I’d prefer to stream it (at will) rather than download it illegally. If I really like it, I’ll buy the CD. The quicker the music industry properly researches people like me and better understands our buying habits, the better suited it will be to deal with the digital evolution of the market. Simply shutting down all forms of filesharing is not the answer, and never was.
hypebot, music, Spotify