TechCrunch:
Nielsen’s U.S. music report on the first half of 2014 shows digital music consumption rapidly shifting from downloads to streaming. On-demand streaming was up 42% over the first half of 2013, racking up 70 billion play in the first half of 2014. Meanwhile, digital track sales fell 13% to 593.6 million and album sales fell 11.6% to 53.8 million. The report on US trends (not international) makes Apple’s acquisition of Beats looks smart, as its iTunes download sales model is quickly dying out. As a whole, dismal digital and physical sales dragged total music sales plus streaming industry down 3.3%.
That’s a pretty good indicator of a shift in consumer habits. Streaming is clearly becoming more mainstream, and curated streams the next evolution.
I personally hate all this streaming crap, I like to own my music. I’ve spent plenty of money at the iTunes store and i shall happily continue doing that.
Streaming must be great for people who have lots of cheap bandwidth they’re not otherwise using.
I’ve been listening to Beats Music for a couple months now and enjoy it. I don’t care whether I own the music or not, and I like the broad selection.
This way, I get to re-visit a lot of old music I used to listen to on FM and from others’ collections without having to commit to buying particular albums.
I find I like the “discoverability” of being able to listen to whole albums and songs and then either move on or add the albums to my library. It lets you shuffle and repeat, too.
We have 10GB/mo with AT&T and haven’t exceeded that yet. We are also at home with WiFi, too.
Expected. Streaming is great but the way Play Music let’s you add songs to your library gives you the best of both worlds.