Synopsis
While music was one of the key drivers behind the early developments in digital media, with faster speeds, video streaming is overtaking music downloading in the fixed and mobile networks. Nevertheless downloading music, music streaming, podcasting and MP3s are still being downloaded in larger numbers, and illegal downloading and sharing is estimated to grow five-fold in five years from 2011.
While mobile is one of the preferred technologies for listening and downloading music, the unit pricing of the major telcos is not conducive to using these networks for music delivery. Most will use free or cheap internet sites to gain access to music. With about 20% or so of Australians who actually pay for downloaded music, many others are using the online killer music apps like YouTube to deliver music.
There are some reports that this is also a fair indication of the future direction of the video entertainment and wireless broadband (mobility) market. In 2011 cloud-based music may be one of the ways to deliver music anywhere and anytime over-the-air, and will grab the other 80% of the users who are using digital media online. With overseas service providers such as Grooveshark or Spotify providing free access to over 10 million tracks interspersed occasionally with ads, business models like these will be hard to contend with.
In this report we provide an overview of the digital media market in Australia, with some statistics and information on the key players including Nokia, Apple, Sony, ninemsn and BigPond Music.
