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Digital
Streaming equalling downloading in the US market
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 15 November 2010
As many Americans are streaming music as downloading it according to new research from the NPD Group shared with Evolver.fm last week.
The number of US music fans using stream-based music services has increased significantly in the last year, following a trend in Europe, and particularly France, where streaming is now believed to be more popular than downloading in the digital music domain.
These stats offer more evidence for those who reckon that the huge success of iTunes-style pay-per-track digital services is a temporary bubble, with subscription-based services like Spotify, Napster and, in the US, Rhapsody and MOG, having better long-term prospects. Access versus ownership and all that.
All of which is interesting and, in a way, a bit scary for the record industry, for whom iTunes has proven so far to be, in the main, the most lucrative digital earner. And certainly the one that is based on real consumer-generated income rather than digital companies paying record labels with venture capital funds.
