The Digital Media Association (DiMA), an industry group representing webcasters like AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo, has hired Greg Barnes as their legislative counsel and director of government affairs. Previously, Barnes was senior counsel to House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers.
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A report by the NPD Group found that 50% of Mac owners are have paid for online music compared to 16% of PC users. Mac users were also more likely to purchase regular CDs than PC owners.
Guess that means that Mac people either a) love music more or b) don’t mind paying for music.
I think the main reason for PC owners not buying digital music is because they don’t use iTunes.
I use a PC and I’ve recently switched my digital music library over to iTunes just recently, but I still don’t have an iTunes Music Store account. I just don’t need one. I don’t like buying DRM crippled music from Apple and I don’t use my iPod often enough. Call me old-fashioned, but I still like to buy CDs and burn them onto my computer. If iTunes sold more DRM-free music, I’d definitely buy digital music more.
On the other hand, perhaps PC users just want to get music illegally and not pay for it.
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According to comScore, Google’s video sites grew 31 percent in November 2007 from the previous month. That makes Google’s sites including YouTube and Google Video the number one video site on the Internet with almost 3 billion videos viewed (31.3 percent share of all videos viewed).
Overall, U.S. Internet users viewed nearly 9.5 billion online videos in November. In fact 75% of Americans viewed online video in November.
Other fun facts:
Bonus: See ComScore’s press release with more figures and the list of the top 10 video properties.
Technorati Tags: comScore, Google, YouTube, streaming, research, Google video
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Satellite radio company Sirius said it gained 2.3 million subscribers in 2007, bringing its total subscriber number to over 8.3 million. That’s a gain of 38% in 2007, so it seems that satellite radio is 
definitely a major player. Recently, research firm Parks Associates forecasted that satellite radio subscribers will almost double from 20.5 million in 2008 to 39 million by 2012.
Meanwhile, the proposed merger between Sirius and XM is still being held up by the Justice Department and the FCC. The merger was announced back in February 2007, and so far it has been held up by regulator concerns. Shareholders have already approved the merger, but there has been opposition from the NAB, a lobbying organization for radio broadcasters. Yesterday, the FCC said that it will make its decision sometime this quarter.
Bonus: Check out a comparison between Sirius and XM here.
Technorati Tags: Sirius, XM Radio, satellite radio
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A year end report from SoundScan found that digital music sales increased 45% in 2007, while physical album sales were down 15% from a year ago. Overall, U.S. music album sales dropped 9.5% in 2007 yet 23% of music sales were derived from digital purchases.
So who’s to blame? The music industry for not putting out great records? Music pirates for stealing money from artists and record labels? Consumers for just not buying enough music last year? Or maybe it’s a combination of these three.
Whatever the case, it can’t be denied that digital music sales are increasing every year. Consumers are getting more comfortable with digital music and that’s a trend that will continue. Overall, 50 million albums were downloaded in 2007, which is 53% more than 2006. The holiday season once again spurred a large number of sales. Online music company Emusic said that subscribers downloaded almost 500,000 tracks and audio books on Christmas Day alone.
Last year saw Radiohead release an online-only album (called “In Rainbows) for a “pay your own price”. And it was a big success for the band. Industry estimates were that there were 1.2 million digital downloads on first day of the album’s release. However, there are no official numbers on downloads or sales released by the band. In an interview in Wired magazine, band members said that Radiohead’s profits from “In Rainbow’s” digital downloads were more than all of the band’s other studio albums. Mostly that’s because Radiohead owned all the rights to their recordings with “In Rainbows”, unlike their previous albums that were split with the record labels.
In 2012, online music sales will grow to $2.8 billion, predicts Jupiter Research, making up 34% of U.S. consumer spending on music.
Technorati Tags: music, digital music, Radiohead, online music
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Jose Alvear is a an author, researcher and analyst on digital media topics. He covers Internet movies, music, IPTV, digital video recorders and everything else for the convergence industry.
Contact him at jose at alvear.com
