Online music forecast
p2pnet.net News:- Warner Music, EMI, Sony BMG and Vivendi Universal, the members of the Big Four Organized Music family, claim file sharing and counterfeiting are almost wholly responsible for business declines, real or otherwise.
But, “ factors like the gradual erosion of music dedicated shelf space in big retailers like HMV and Virgin and its replacement with DVD’s, book, games and mobile phones cannot be ignored,” says a report.
Seen in this light, “the fact that the decline in physical music sales corresponds to the boom in DVD sales begins to look less like a coincidence and more like a cause,” says Screen Digest.
If the world of independent online music continues to thrive, Organized Music efforts to crush it notwithstanding, what’s going to happen with the corporates?
The Big Four will probably become the Big Three, according to the report, and, “As one of the two majors not affiliated to larger media groups it has seemed likely that EMI will merge with another company at some point,” it says, going on:
Within the last ten years EMI has been the focus of a number of takeover bids that have involved Seagram, AOL Time Warner and BMG. However, a mixture of regulatory hurdles and disagreements over detail have prevented any of these deals coming to fruition. Most recently it has been linked with a takeover of
Warner Music though the talks were reported as ending when Warner rejected the offer from EMI. It should be noted that any proposed merger with another major has been cast into doubt by the July 2006 ruling from the CFI and both Warner and EMI have signalled that they will not be pursuing the matter for the time being.
The other non-affi liated major, Warner, was formed in February 2004 when the Warner Music Group demerged from AOL Time Warner. The company is the smallest of the majors and has been holding fourth place both globally and in Europe for some time.
Since even before its separation from AOL Time Warner, the Warner label has been the subject of takeover interest from EMI.
For Warner, a private purchase involving another company might leapfrog regulatory issues thrown up by any potential merger with another music company and allow a quicker exit for the investment group led by Edgar Bronfman Jr.
Meanwhile, European consumer spending on online music will reach e-280,00,000 (about $357,109,141) by the end of 2006, more than double the Euro121m spent in 2005, says Screen Digest, adding:
“By 2010 consumer spending on online music will generate more than Euro1.1bn.”
It will, of course, be more – a lot more – than that if and when the Big Four finally stop trying to sue their customers into buying formulaic, over-priced digital downloads from arid catalogues.
Until then, the corporate online music market will continue to struggle along, dwarfed by the vast streams of for the most part unmonetized traffic on the p2p networks and indie sites.
Also See:
Screen Digest – Online Music in Europe: Market Assessment and Forecast, August, 2006
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November 6th, 2006 at 1:12 pm
Lets assume iTunes will get 70%, Yahoo and Rhapsody – 25 % and russain sites like allofmp3.com or http://www.mp3ninja.com – the rest.
Are these proportions clear? Or I am too pessimistic about iTunes?