That could very well be the case today with the huge catalogs offered by all of the streaming services. Millions of choices is actually no choice at all.
Industry consultant Mark Mulligan of MIDiA has some interesting statistics on the subject (shown on the left) where out of a catalog of 25 million songs, only about 5% (1.25 million) is frequented and just 1% (250,000) is played often.
As a result, a $9.95 subscription price just seems like too much to the average music consumer. It's too many choices and they're walking away from a paid subscription.
Mark suggests that niche services would offer much more value to the average fan (the superfan is happy as is). That means a service that only serves a genre of music, like metal, hip-hop or jazz, with the catalog limited in the number of artists, titles and playlists. Of course, a lower price of $3.99 to $4.99 would help it be a winner as well.
That would get rid of all the covers, copies and karaoke versions that just clutter up the streaming app and currently haunt Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play and virtually every other music service.
This is idea who's time has not yet come, as the industry pushback would be enormous, but it's an idea worth considering. Read Mark's full article and his great blog here.
