Study: digital sales will account for 40% of music purchases by 2012
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Apr 9, 2008 at 10:23am
Digital sales of music represented 10 percent of the total worldwide music market in 2007, up from six percent in 2006, according to In-Stat. By 2012, digital music sales will represent 40 percent of all music purchased worldwide, the high-tech market research firm says.
Factors contributing to this growth include the global expansion of broadband, continued demand for single-track downloads, and expanding music catalogues. Another key driver is the potential for market growth in full-track downloads to mobile handsets in markets other than Japan, which currently is the primary market for this type of digital music format. “Digital piracy continues to represent the primary challenge to online music service providers,” says Stephanie Ethier, In-Stat analyst. “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.”
Recent research by In-Stat found that:
° Sales for online digital music reached US$3.05 billion in 2007, up 48 percent 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 percent) in 2007 didn’t pay for the video they saw from the Internet.
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
