A new report from the IFPI has confirmed suspicions that, yes, a lot a of people are listening to a lot of music, a lot of the time. While this may not be much of a surprise, the annual report does provide some interesting additional data on when and where listeners across the globe are consuming their music.
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Guest post by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0
The IFPI released its annual Music Consumer Insight Report, and as usual, it has data that confirms suspicions and also surprises. This is a truly a global look at music consumption since the data was collected by AudienceNet from a wide demographic aged 16-64 from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom and United States. Here’s what it found:
• Music is an integral part of our lives: On average, we each enjoy music for 17.8 hours per week or 2.5 hours per day, with the car being the most popular listening location. 40% listen while working or studying while 19% listen while going to sleep.
• Streaming is virtually ubiquitous: 86% of us listen to music through on-demand streaming. Young music consumers are most engaged streamers, with 57% of 16-24 year olds using a paid audio streaming service.
• Consumer are engaging with their local music genres: Music consumers especially enjoy listening to local music genres, with 66% of consumers in Japan listening to J-Pop, 69% of consumers in France listening to Variété Française and, in Brazil, 55% listening to música popular brasileira.
• High-growth music markets are seeing high levels of licensed engagement: 96% of consumers in China and 96% in India listen to licensed music.
• Most music consumers listen on their smartphones: 75% of all people listen on their smartphones, and 94% of 16 to 24 year olds. That said, only 27% of all consumption comes from listening on mobile devices.
• User upload services continue to dominate consumption: Nearly half of all time spent listening to on-demand music is on YouTube.
• Copyright infringement remains a significant issue: More than one-third (38%) of consumers obtain music through infringing methods – with stream ripping the dominant method (32% of consumers). I thought this one was a little bogus but the explanation seems to fit. Apparently, stream ripping users say that they want to listen to music offline, which means that they’re not able (or simply don’t want) to pay for the paid tier of a streaming service.