Australia - Digital Media - Music Industry

Synopsis

Music was one of the early key drivers behind the developments in digital media but, with faster speeds, both mobile broadband-based and fixed broadband video streaming has overtaken music downloading. Nevertheless music streaming, podcasting and downloading MP3s is a growing activity, particularly among the younger demographic. Inflexible digital rights arrangements are still leading to illegal downloading.

Competition among streaming services has also resulted in declining revenue, which led to BigPond Music deciding to close its service in August 2015.

Mobile phones are now the preferred devices for listening and downloading music, overtaking iPod/MP3 players. With included data now on many mobile plans a lot of users now use free or cheap internet sites to gain access to music.

With the 20% or so of Australians who actually pay for downloaded music, many others are using the online music apps like YouTube and other cloud-based sites to obtain their music. Cloud-based music has been the major growth area in recent years. It is expected that the other 80% of users who are using digital media online will try it and then some will continue to use these services – with some service providers giving cheap or free complimentary access for a couple of months and access to over 20 million tracks, some interspersed occasionally with ads. The online industry has also created several new services, especially around interaction with artist, festivals and concerts.

This report provides an overview of the digital media market in Australia.

Key developments:

Streaming, illegal downloading, online listening, podcasting, MP3, Radio, cloud, streaming market.

Companies mentioned in this report include:

Nokia, Apple, Sony, ninemsn, MOG, Google, TwitterMusic Rara, BigPond Music, Rdio, JB Hi-FI, Grooveshark, Spotify, Take 40.