Consumers Prefer Ownership To Streaming?

A new study by the Insight Research Group and commissioned by eMusic that took place in August 2011 came up with some very interesting results.

Despite the inroads of Spotify, Rhapsody, Grooveshark, the various cloud music services, and a whole host of other streaming services, the study contends that music consumers would much rather own their music than stream it.

Here's what they found:

-- 91% prefer to own music because it allows them to listen as many times as they want

-- 89% prefer to own the music they like, rather than stream it

-- 86% feel that ownership gives them security that their files will not disappear

-- 76% use streaming to discover music that is new to them, before they decide whether or not to buy

--74% will stream music for free, but wouldn't pay to stream

-- Only 13% pay to stream music online; 84% of consumers who pay to stream also purchase digital music files

-- 79% do not think they will ever give up owning music and just stream it online

-- 39% will store digital music files they own in a cloud-digital locker, so that they can listen to them anywhere

-- Only 14% will increase their use of paid streaming services

Now the first thing about this study is that it was commissioned by eMusic and they're a music retailer. It's in their best interest to have these kinds of results to keep their customers buying and the record labels and artists supplying to them. The second thing is that we're just on the event horizon of the streaming revolution. Come back and do the same study next year at this time and let's see the results then.

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