Digital Music Streams Up 24% in 2013 Ahead of iTunes Radio Launch
Ahead of the launch of iTunes Radio this fall, Nielsen has published its findings on U.S. music sales for the first half of 2013. Amongst other things, the survey showed total streams of both audio and video music increased 24% to 51 billion streams versus the same time period last year.
With digital album sales rising only 6.3% and digital single-track sales actually down 2.3%, streaming music is clearly a major growth area for the music industry and with Apple
launching iTunes Radio on millions of iOS devices this fall, it could give a further boost to the music streaming.
iTunes Radio will include Pandora-style genre- and artist-based channels, extensive iTunes Store integration, and both ad-supported and ad-free subscription options. It is expected to launch to the public this fall alongside iOS 7.
TechCrunch has the full report, including lists of the most streamed songs and purchased albums.
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Top Rated Comments
Spotify blew the market out of the water, it's well worth the $10/month. Apple has the best chance of creating a better product, but iTunes Radio is far from that.
Which is why Spotify and Xbox Music are going to destroy Apple's weak offering.
Would the poor musicians prefer we get our music through piracy instead?
The way I see it, this streaming model is the first thing to come along that actually has a good shot of competing with piracy while getting the artists paid, even if they aren't paid as much as they were in the $15 CD days.
Sales of recorded music has been a loss leader for quite some time now, and I don't think this trend is going to reverse anytime soon. People seem to be willing to pay quite a lot of a live performance or for branded merchandise; but they will only pay that high price for artists they already listen to a lot.
I bet if Apple released a spotify-like service you would say "Who would buy albums? This service is great!".