Digital Music To Account For 40% Of Sales By 2012
Fueled by broadband, demand for single-track downloads, piracy, expanding music catalogues and the burgeoning market for music downloads to mobile phones, digital music sales will represent an impressive 40% of all music purchased worldwide by 2012 according to this report from In-Stat. Digital sales of music represented 10% of the total worldwide music market in 2007, up from 6% in 2006.
Digital piracy continues to represent the primary challenge to online music service providers. Other obstacles still include the lack of interoperability between services and devices due to differing digital rights management (DRM) technologies, and weak consumer demand for subscription-based services. Another potential market inhibitor is the fact that content owners, cellular service providers and handset manufacturers are increasing the amount of marketing and promotion for mobile music.
Some highlights:
- Sales for online digital music reached $3.05 billion in 2007, up 48% from 2006.
- Revenue for worldwide full track mobile downloads will reach approximately $4.2 billion by 2012.
- The majority of respondents who accessed online video (72.3%) in 2007 did not pay for the video they saw from the Internet.
Filed under: Business, Statistics