When portable music players first hit the market, and I’m talking about the Sony Walkman here, it changed the way not only people consumed the songs they loved, but how they interacted with the world around them. Whether or not you think the army of zombies marching with headphones plugged so deep into their ear canals that they can’t hear the sounds of the city is a good or bad thing, people today listen to more music than ever before. The iPod, and similar hard drive based devices that hit the market in the early part of this century, let people carry around a near infinite audio collection, but now that we have smartphones the dedicated music player market is slowly starting to come to an end. Analysts at Juniper Research say that in 2010 mobile music generated nearly $3.1 billion, and that number will swell to $5.5 billion by 2015, all thanks to that little piece of metal and plastic we keep with us at all times, but the threat of piracy still looms.
While the music industry is mucking about, trying to find a business model that works, people of all ages and varying degrees of computer literacy are stealing content. The situation will only exacerbate once high speed mobile broadband networks roll out and we’ll be able to grab complete discographies in the time it takes to drink a coffee at your local cafe. At IntoMobile we love subscription services such as Spotify, Rhapsody, and Rdio, but the public has yet to adopt such services en masse. It’s really confusing too since for the cost of 1 album per month you get access to millions of songs that you can stream anywhere you have a signal, and you can even store said songs offline for those of you who have long commutes in the subway or along a highway with spotty coverage.
Maybe it’ll just take time. Paying for something you once got for free may feel odd, but I’ve personally haven’t pirated music in months.