Digital Lifescapes

Once again, the recorded music industry is at a pivotal juncture in their evolution. The recent recording artist royalty disputes with Spotify has intensified concern about the economic viability of streaming music subscription services. The latest market study by Strategy Analytics found that despite continuous growth in adoption of music streaming services, current providers are having difficulty turning music streaming into a profit. Given the ongoing financial challenges with this business model, the resolution is still unclear. "Technology is evolving and changing the way consumers discover, listen to, share, and interact with music, but it is also a significant factor in the decline of music industry revenues. Many artists feel they are under compensated by streaming services, but as currently structured the underlying economics won't support higher royalty payments by these service, particularly for free ad-supported services" said Leika Kawasaki, analyst at St...

Across a variety of formats, digital music is undoubtedly the most mature segment of mobile entertainment. Mobile devices are uniquely positioned to become a key platform in the music industry, given their ubiquity, connectivity and continual presence with the end-user. That being said, the music industry itself continues to be plagued with difficulties, particularly as far as recorded music is concerned. Juniper Research found that the digital music industry will experience slow growth in revenue over the next 5 years, growing from $12.3 billion this year to $13.9 billion in 2019. The latest global market study also found that a strong performance in the robust streamed music sector will largely be offset by decline in revenues from legacy services -- such as mobile ringtones and ringback tones. Streaming Music in the Mobile Cloud  According to the market study findings, the worldwide digital music market will be characterized by consumer migration to cloud based services...