Streaming music services like Spotify seem like n0-brainer winners. You get unlimited access to a virtually unlimited catalog of music for a nominal monthly fee. How could streaming music not be a runaway success? By not catching on with the all-important youth/student demographic, that’s how.
A new survey of 10,000 university students, conducted by the University of Reading, finds that 75% of students would rather pay for songs and download music to their hard drive or music player. The survey indicates that the streaming music model, while attractive, just doesn’t give students the kind of semi-tangible goods that music downloads provide.
With more and more music stores eschewing DRM, digital-rights management, protection, it’s getting easier to take music libraries from the desktop to mobile. And, with on-board smartphone/music player memory stores hitting 32GB, storage space is fast becoming a non-issue. Is it any wonder college students prefer to own their music rather than rent it from a streaming music store? Take Nokia’s Comes With Music, for example, that has yet to sign up 200,000 customers. Best Buy’s decision to put their Napster iPhone app on ice is starting to make more sense now.
What say you? Is streaming music something you’d pay for? Or would you rather stick to the pay-per-song model and own your music?
[Via: PRNewswire]