Last year Jupiter Analyst Mark Mulligan predicted that 2007 would be the year of free music. Mark just put up a post with a tepid prediction that 2008 will now be the year of free music.
Mark cites the following as the developments pointing to free music in 2008:
Yes these are positive developments but the most powerful developments pushing advertising supported downloaded music forward are:But there is a lot of positive activity:
• Spiral Frog’s September launch.
• Pandora and Ruckuss both continue to build
• Last.FM was bought by CBS in may for a whopping $280 million, has deals in place with Warner and SonyBMG and has gone from strength to strength.
• The ever entrepreneurial Peter Gabriel invested in UK start up WE7
• As of Wednesday MOG signed a deal with Rhapsody making music available throughout the network, with 25 songs a week for free and a subscription fee for fully integrated unlimited access
• But perhaps the least heralded yet most significant development is Imeem. The social network music service has just signed a deal with Universal for streaming its catalogue across the service, which means that Imeem now has deals with all of the majors. The service enables people to upload tracks, create and share playlists and stream music audio and video. In short it enables users to immerse themselves in music as part of their social networking behaviour. But most importantly, as with Last.FM and MOG, it is trying to do something different with the web and music rather than try to re-invent the offline world online.
- The growing demand by consumers for free content. For example, Limewire is now installed on 36% of computers worldwide.
- The continued rapid decline in CD sales, which is forcing the recording industry to open their collective mind to what consumers want.
I'll end this post with the same thought I ended a previous post on this topic:
We can predict with certainty that ad-supported music will happen, we just can't predict when. But when it does start, it will usher in, not the year of the free, but the decades of the free.
2 comments:
All good stuff except for SpiralFrog that will set the ad supported model back in the minds of the industry.
They have little or no audience, which in turn means little or no ad revenue. their own statement said $20,000 for the 3rd quarter and that included their launch month with the highest level of traffic they will ever expect to get. The model only works if the offer is attractive and easy to use. 1m songs is nothing when compared to itunes 5m or even ruckas's 3m. The down load doesn't work, it's not mac compatible, doesn't work on the iphone and even with my pc I and my friends couldn't get it to work.
You are absolutely correct about Spiralfrog, but don't judge the inevitability of advertising supported music by Spiralfrog's poor implementation.
I don't think Spiralfrog will set the model back. The forces pushing ad-supported music forward are too powerful.
Ad-supported music will keep trying until it finds the way.
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