Mobile music subscriptions that offer unlimited music downloads on a rental basis will surge to $3.3 billion by 2012 and eclipse the market for paid-for original recordings, predict Juniper Research’s crystal ball gazers in a new report.
‘Music rental services such as those offered by Omnifone are incredibly ‘sticky,’ in that once consumers have taken the time and effort to build up an extensive playlist, they will be increasingly reluctant to unsubscribe from that service and from the operator, thereby providing a significant boost to average revenue per user levels,’ says the report’s author, Windsor Holden.
Total revenue from original recordings delivered to handsets (on both paid-for and rental basis) is projected to increase from $960 million in 2007 to $6.1 billion in 2012.
Meanwhile, Juniper sees India and China as a big opportunity for the mobile music industry.
The report forecasts that when 3G services are rolled out in emerging markets, full-track download sales will mushroom, with the volume of downloads in the Indian sub-continent alone rising from less than two million in 2007 to nearly 480 million in 2012.
In other conclusions, the Juniper report predicts that the global market for end-user generated mobile music revenues will rise from $8.9 billion in 2007 to nearly $17.6 billion in 2012 and that revenues from ringtones and realtones will peak in 2010 and then fall because of competitive pricing associated with migration to ad-funded or self-created ringtones.