Radio Leads In Music Discovery

FMQB: Paragon Media has released the third and final part of its study on new media's effects on radio. The latest findings show that terrestrial radio is the #1 source for listening to music..Purchased CDs were next with 30 percent of the vote, and radio also beat out television, personalized CDs, music downloads, satellite radio and Internet radio.
The full series of reports, here...

Burst! Media Survey Results

Press Release: Not surprisingly, Burst Media's latest survey (which measured responses from 13,000 web users 14 yrs. and older) indicated that "The personal computer is rapidly replacing other ubiquitous appliances such as the telephone, radio and television as the household's tool of choice." Overall, the results show a promising future for internet music...

--US Respondents 24 years and younger say the Internet is currently the primary way in which they either listen to music (39.1% )
--More than half of all respondents say they use the Internet to listen to music (52.3%) while US consumers 24 years or younger actually listen to music over the internet considerably more - 76.5% of the time...

"Computers are displacing many household entertainment appliances. Along with VoIP and streaming video, this is just the beginning of a centralization of most communication and entertainment functions in the home into a single appliance," says Chuck Moran, Manager of Market Research for BURST! Media.

New Podcast Research Report

Adding to my post yesterday about the potential dangers of downloading Podcasts, here's a relatively new research report produced last May by The Diffusion Group called "Podcasting as an Extension of Portable Digital Media – Fact, Fiction, and Opportunity." 

"Podcasting uniquely serves the mushrooming portable music player market and has no competition.  All podcasting industry factors point to high growth over the next
several years for US portable digital music players, the storage of those players for music and podcast content, and music subscription services for content to fill the players with. TDG estimates there were under 1 million active podcasting users last year, which will grow to 5 million at the end of 2005, and 66 million in 2010."

Teenagers & Technology

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has just released a new report on teenagers and technology based on a November 2004 survey of 1,100 youth between the ages of 12 and 17 and their parents...Given the fact that cell phones and internet access are increasingly crucial to the daily life of this influential demographic, its well worth the time to read for some insight...The results indicate that today's youth are leading the transition to a fully wired and mobile nation..."The number of teenagers using the internet has grown 24% in the past four years and 87% of those between the ages of 12 and 17 are online...Also, there has been significant growth over the past four years in the number of teens who play games on the internet, get news, shop online, and get health information." (Click HERE to access the free PDF.)

Media Hub Market Still Up For Grabs

Consumer clarity regarding the use of media servers in the home is rather low for the second year in a row, but new data suggests that there is still strong interest, according to Ipsos Insight’s most recent survey of American Internet users. The survey titled "America’s Digital Den" utilizes a sample of 1,897 online U.S. adults and teens aged 13 and over, which examines consumer awareness, usage, and attitudes toward digital entertainment content and the convergence of entertainment devices and content in the home...Sounds like a promising market set to explode soon...

"Just over one out of three consumers is aware of the media hub—or Digital Den—concept, basically unchanged from a year ago at 38%. When exposed to the concept, nearly six out of ten (57%) consumers show an interest in buying a media hub. Among consumers who show an interest in owning a media hub, just over a quarter (27%) anticipate acquiring one within the next six months, and nearly one third (30%) anticipate doing so within six months to a year."

Internet-Derived Music Revenues On The Rise

emarketer: Here are some interesting figures from a recent report published by Informa Media Group...IMG forecasts that the online music download market will reach $2 billion worldwide in 2010 and that the total revenues generated from the sale of all recorded music (i.e., optical discs, downloads and subscriptions) will realize over $6 billion in total Internet-derived revenues...

Music Pirates Actually Purchase More

webuser: According to digital music research company, The Leading Question, "music pirates spend four and half times more on legitimate music downloads than average fans." That's not too hard to believe if you stop and think about it...Despite the RIAA and the IFPI's propaganda and public relations strategy - discovering new music online has long been thought of as being complementary to physical/digital sales and here's some more quantitative proof to prove it...(As far as I can tell, the survey only included 600 respondents - but even so - it still provides us with some valuable data.)

The BBC also reports that  "The research clearly shows that music fans who break piracy laws are highly valuable customers," according to Paul Brindley, director of The Leading Question. "It also points out that they are eager to adopt legitimate music services in the future...There's a myth that all illegal downloaders are mercenaries hell-bent on breaking the law in pursuit of free music...In reality, hardcore fans are extremely enthusiastic about paid-for services, as long as they are suitably compelling." Read the article if you can as there are some interesting findings, especially with respect to mobile music...

Related:
--File swappers are biggest digital music spenders

Identifying P2P Users Using Traffic Analysis

Security Focus: Here's a great article that helps explain and take some of the mystery out of how the various reported P2P statistics are currently being tabulated. 3 popular methods (i.e., Port based analysis, Protocol analysis, Traffic behavior patterns) can be used to decompose hybrid decentralized network UDP traffic...While somewhat technical, I found it very interesting to discover how to find out which hosts are running P2P applications in a decentralized network structure...(Also worth noting, the technique discussed in this article can't be used to identify Bittorrent users.)

Legal Downloads Triple in Q1-2/05

Yahoo: Yesterday, the IFPI announced that 180 million single tracks were downloaded legally in the first six months of the year, (compared to 57 million tracks in the first half of 2004 and 157 million for the whole of last year) which is yet another indication that legitimate download marketshare has definitely surpassed 2% in total global recorded music revenues (many are claiming it's now as high as 6%)...While broadband penetration was credited for most of the surge along with continued prosection and education - I'm not so sure those numbers aren't just the result of massive MP3 player growth (thanks to the iPod) and the fact that legal digital music sites have tripled in the last year - and most importantly - people wanting to get with it and "own" rather than "rent" their music... 

Latest In-vehicle Audio Entertainment System Research

Strategy Analytics has released a new report that sheds some light on a growing market worth further examination... "By the end of 2011 the market for in-vehicle audio entertainment systems will be worth US$56B, in terms of OE and aftermarket systems sales across North America, Europe and Japan, increasing from US$27B in 2004...Over the next 2-3 years, the market for in-vehicle entertainment systems will be most significantly impacted by: new digital audio products that play ‘soft’ music files; digital broadcast technologies; and emerging display based entertainment systems."