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Business News Digital Labels & Publishers
Majority of web users don’t currently expect to pay for online content
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 11 November 2009
The good news is that more people are paying for music online than for any other types of content. The bad news is that only a quarter of web users say they expect to pay for online music services in the future, and over half say they don’t see themselves ever paying for web-based content services.
Those stats come from a new survey from Forrester Research, which comes out as an increasing number of content companies reach the conclusion that only subscription-based online content services will be commercially viable in the long term.
Of the web users Forrester surveyed, 14% said they were already paying to access music online, which is, probably unsurprisingly, more than are paying for movies and ebooks (8% and 4% respectively). 25% of those surveyed did say they expected to pay for online music at some point in the future, but 58% said they did not.
The report remarks: “Music is the most advanced market [on the internet] but still far from maturity. While the proportion of European internet users who claim to have paid to access music online – 14% – is relatively high, the sector is a long way from reaching its potential. Just one-quarter of European internet users say they would pay for online music in the future, suggesting that the current portfolio of music services fails to meet their needs”.
Nevertheless, Team Forrester do offer some optimism for those crafting pay-to-use online content services. They conclude: “Free content may still dominate the web, but as more services are launched that actually meet users’ needs, we can start to map a future for paid content, too”.
