My Thoughts on Technology and Jamaica: Nielsen Stats record continued decline in Music Downloads - Developed World Streaming will catch on in Developed World once we get 4G LTE

Sunday, July 6, 2014

Nielsen Stats record continued decline in Music Downloads - Developed World Streaming will catch on in Developed World once we get 4G LTE

In a continuation of the Stats from Nielsen that had forecasted Music Downloading’s Demise, Nielsen brings us more gloomy news. Earlier Nielsen Stats suggested that Music Downloading was seeing a Decline of 11% when the period January to March 2014 was compared to the same period in 2013 as reported in my Geezam blog article entitled Apple iOS 8 may free Apple iTunes Radio on Google Play Store,

Turns out now that Downloading is now definitely set on a declining path, reaching 12% across both album and individual track sales in Digital up to June 2014 when compared to the same period in 2013 as reported in “DIGITAL MUSIC SALES DIP 12 PERCENT AS LISTENERS SWITCH TO STREAMING”, published  July 4, 2014 By David Nield, Digitaltrends. You can check out and download the Nielsen study on Scribd via this link.

Here are the Nielsen Stats comparing Music Sales within the period January to June 2014 to the same period in 2013:

1.      12% decline in both Digital album and individual track sales 
2.      42% increase in On-Demand Streaming
3.      40.4% increase in physical vinyl records
4.      4 million physical vinyl records sold
5.      14.9% decline in physical and Digital Music including both CD and Digital sales

When it comes down to the Songs that are most Streamed and the Most Downloaded, if you've been following the Music scene, then the numbers will confirm your suspicions:

1.      Dark Horse by Katy Perry and Juicy J is the Most Streamed Song with 65 million streams 
2.      Happy by Pharrell Williams is the Most Downloaded song

In fact, the Nielsen numbers seem to be the reason why Apple had purchase Beats Electronics in order to integrate their Beats Audio Streaming Platform to augment their ageing Download Model based on Apple iTunes as pointed out in my blog article entitledApple officially confirms Beats Audio Purchase - US$3.2 Billion as Apple gears up for Subscription Streaming and improved Headphones”.

Streaming vs Downloading – Developed World Streaming will catch on in Developed World


Good to note that downloading is still strong in the Developing World; we're yet to get High Speed Wireless Broadband Services such as 4G LTE from any of our Telecom Providers who just recently purchased Spectrum from the Ministry of Science, Technology, Energy and Mining to begin the process as stated in my blog article entitledLIME and Digicel have purchase AWS and 700 MHZ Spectrum for 4G LTE - Spectrum Purchase by the Number with Strings Attached as Ministry gets kitty donations from Local Telcos”.


As a side note, the Nielsen Statistics coves Video Streaming as well. 36.64 billion Video Streams vs 33.65 billion Audio streams so far this year is an indication of the continued dominance of Video Streaming that's leading to the slow demise of Paid Cable Services as predicted in my blog article entitledCable TV subscriptions Declines as the Connected Home boost IPTV Streaming”.


The fact that Music Streaming is so close in terms of Raw Streaming figures indicates that my prediction of the Rise in Music Streaming as described in my blog article entitledMusic Cloud Streaming set to rise in 2014 - Still no home-grown Jamaican or Caribbean Free Cloud Storage Services as we Ride Along on Foreign Cloud Services” is well founded and is now a strong possibility.


Not wanting to take any chances, the RJR Communications Group has decided to roll out their Video and Audio Streaming Platforms powered by UNIV’s uVOD Streaming Platform by October 2014 as explained in my blog article entitled “RJR Group to launch UNIV’s uVOD Streaming Platform by October 2014 - Streaming Gamble against Piracy as 2015 is DSO to DTT and Digital HD Radio”.


The Future is increasingly looking to be a live-Streaming Future dominated by the Internet. Combined with increasingly cheaper Mobile Computing devices and the coming of the Google Glass in 2015 as predicted in my blog article entitled Google Glass launched early as a Product - Google pre-empting Samsung Galaxy Glass and Facebook's Oculus Rift replacing the smartphone in 2015 the Year of the Sheep”, Apple’s decision was in the Nick of Time.

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