Trade Review: Week Twelve (1/2)

Will Streaming Music Replace MP3s?

            The MP3 music model could be heading for a decline as music streaming boosts in popularity over other models since last year. Music consumers are spending less time on their purchased music and trending towards music streaming because it is a more convenient, free and unlimited way to access all of their favorite music: “A report from research firm NPD Group shows that more people are listening to streaming music and fewer are clicking on the music files stored on their computers. The decline in music files played was small — just 2 percent of people listened less to files” (Gowan). The 2% decrease in files played on MP3s will hopefully also create a downward trend of piracy because music streaming sights consumers can access a song in the same search engine fashion people look for music to download online.

Additionally, music streaming does not need storage space on file sizes, iPods or MP3 players, which will not limit the consumer to what songs they can put on their devices. Consequently, we could also see a decline in products bought from Apple and other mobile music playing devices. However, a major flaw in music streaming services is that the bandwidth support on mobile devices is not as strong as their computer service. Therefore, mobile streaming is not as crisp as an MP3 downloaded song would sound on a mobile device, which may be a strong factor as to why MP3s will always be around. As our guest speaker this past week, San Spink, said that the music industry is a forever-changing business that always seems to freak out whenever a new innovation comes along (cassettes, CDs, MP3s and now streaming). Mr. Spink claims it is just a simple transition period of consumers and industry executives adjusting to the new consumer trends in order to modify their own expectations and business models to create viable, efficient revenue from these new innovations. Therefore, this decline in MP3 plays may not necessarily mean that MP3s are going to vanish from the music industry, but this statistic and others related to the industry that display change towards music streaming is simply natural.