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Portable MP3 Hardware Sales Up
prostoalex writes "In December of 2002 only 12% of US music downloaders owned a digital music player, while for this year the number has increased to 17%. Jupiter Research expects the sales of the digital music players to double this year, while another research agency notes a remarkable shift towards paying for music. Even the music industry tends to agree that online music stores are a boon and expects the Web sales to really take off in 2004." (And the sales of Ogg-capable hardware are up, too, since there finally is some.)
is that >4/5 of music downloaders still only listen to that music on their computers - ? When MP3 playing portable cd players (whew, that's long), for example, hardly cost more than one's that don't..
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
I just bought one of these. (page in swedish sorry) Very nifty, you hang it around your neck, it only weighs 15 grams. Great when you want to go running and 256 MB is more than enough for a jogging run.
If these number go up after the Pepsi million song giveaway with Itunes. Supposedley it will be on during the superbowl, so that would be a big target audience.
Funny how the music industry changes its tune as soon as the money starts rolling in.
...while the RIAA locks and loads the lawsuit cannon for yet another salvo.
"Oh yeah, the Internet, it's the latest thing!"
I wonder if customers will be as easily confused?
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So let me get this straight:
In 2002 only 12% of people downloading music owned MP3 players
In 2003 17% of people downloading music owned MP3 players.
So we're talking percents of percents here. 12% of however many people were downloading music (on that'd be less if we're talking people who've paid for their downloaded music). Has this number increased, decreased?
Thankfully in the new 2003 Jupiter Research consumer survey, 6 percent of online adults said they would be buying a portable music device in the next 12 months. What's an online adult, am I an online adult?
Uhuh? Anyone else confused? They seem like numbers just for the sake of numbers to me...
I'm sure the RIAA is quaking in their boots hearing this. I keep waiting for them to start to go after MP3 manufacturers because we all know if you use an MP3 player you steal music.
Which had me really interested in the interview with Steve Jobs previously referenced here on slashdot was that music execs thought that 'ripping a CD' equated to theft, not to converting it to MP3s.
To be that out of touch with consumers of your product just helps me feel that market pressures, not lawsuits or 'civil disobediance' of supporting Kazaa and other illegal methods of distribution will slowly convert the morons.
That or we could all hope they die of old age because to not understand what Ripping is they have to be 100+ and never used a computer in their life. Hell my Grandpa new what the internet was and he was 91 when he joked about me finding him a girlfriend online after I met my wife that way. He drove road graters for a living, and never touched a computer.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
The music industry corporations made a bundle by changing the format of the media that they supply. There were millions made when the CD replaced the LP and millions of older releases were sold to people who already had the album.
The shift to a portable digital format has been made outside of their control and now they are struggling to catch up.
The lack of willingness by the younger population (12-17) in this study to purchase music points to the fact that they may have already missed the boat.
Where have you been? Then money's been rolling in.
There was that 12 year-old girl they sued and got some money out of, that 70-something year old man they sued, the college kids they sued, the housewife they're suing, etc., etc.
Damn Moronic Editors
I'm assuming you mean downloadable videos that you can burn yourself. This will probably happen when your average person's bandwidth gets high enough that downloading an entire movie is no more of a hassle than downloading a CD worth of music is now. Why? Because at that point the online trading of videos will truly begin and the MPAA will have to start looking at a different business model, just as the RIAA is now. Personally, I think the whole of the RIAA are idiots because they really missed an incredible opportunity to drastically reduce their distribution costs. They seem to be just now coming to their senses, but because they waited so long they have to deal with lots of "middle men" and competition.
Just wait and see. When you can download 2GB of data in about 2 hours, you'll start seeing the market open up. And before anybody jumps all over me, yes, I'm aware that there are already "stores" where you can watch streaming video or download and watch, but I don't think these are the same quality as what you would get on a DVD. Somebody correct me (and provide info) if I'm wrong.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
You mean "Vorbis", not "Ogg". As has been pointed out many times, Ogg is the "container", and Vorbis is the audio codec.
</pedant>
Ydco co
right now seems like a good chance for me to say thank you to all who provided useful comments and tips in the article posted earlier this week on the lack of discounts available for the Apple iPod.
alas, I still have not been able to find a decent deal. Many have pointed to apple's refurb'd items store, but it's out of stock on ipods. the best thing I've got right now is that Target will give you a $15 gift card when you buy an ipod.
my best hope is that some marketer at Apple will see the original post and the responses and perhaps have a change of heart in what seems to be their "no discounting" policy, and how the cheaper prices offered by their competitors might be beating them in the market.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Personally even with my 1.5MB/s DSL I do not consider that a feature I'm looking for.
Number of reasons
A) The size of the file to get the quality of Video/Audio that I want. Basically I need a DVD worth of quality at a minimum, which is 5 - 10 GBs of space. I like the extras, trailers, etc. So to get this, I'd need to 'want to watch a movie' maybe a day after I decide to get the movie.
B) I'm a collector of sorts. I've got about 700 DVDs that I've impulse bought since 1996 or so. Granted I've only purchased about 700 CDs and a few hundred songs via iTunes. With that many DVDs and the associated data on them, if I wanted to have them for 'instant gratification' I'd need roughly 4.2TBs of storage. That doesn't account for even more stuff coming out over the next x number of years.
Granted newer encoding tech such as MPEG-4 vs. MPEG-2 might help with the storage requirements, but then I'd need to have the movie companies re-encode things like 'Better off Dead' or '*Batteries not included' which about 20 people probably would want, and then I'd need to re-spend money to get them that way.
DVDs have introduced a new phenomenon to the movie industry. People willing to buy them.
I bought 9 video tapes. The first six star trek movies & the original Star Wars trilogy (not that re-done versoin, the THX version)
Just my $0.02.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
What the music services need to do now is provide a web based interface to their music library. I really hate it that itunes and napster require you to instll their software before seeing if a particular song/artist/album is avail. If I'm only looking for a particular song/artist/album then I don't want to install some random piece of software first. Granted most people are going to pick and use one service as their primary, ie iTunes for me, but I'm not adverse to using others if they carry music I can't get through my primary.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
It is great that MP3 player sales are up, but I don't think that there is necessarily any sort of relationship to online music sales.
Now maybe there *is* a relationship to increased use of P2P services by the public...
Correct me if I'm wrong....
What about the interface? Does it have an elegant easy to use interface like the iPod, or is it more like most MP3 players with some horrible hack job of an interface?
I read the internet for the articles.
Connectivity FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 through dock connector
If you are going to rant get the facts right first.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
And in an emergency can be used as a brick for repairing leaking dams. Man that thing's big...
Karma all the way for me, fits in the palm of your hand.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
There's not one new music selling place that hasn't at least broke even at $0.99 a track? ow long before we see that special "mini Album" by (insert pop star here) for 4.99 for *6* songs?
Of course, Jack Valenti will still be moaning, but the rest of the industry will be looking at him the same way they look at him when he talks about VCR's and rentals... I.e. "what were we thinking?" after having made more money per song by not having to pay hardly anything to distribute it.
-Chris
The iPod can record with a Belkin add-on mic. It records right to disk, so you can record hundreds of hours of stuff.
I dunno. I have an older car (1995) that only had a tape-deck/radio. Since I have a large collection of music ripped to MP3 format, I was growing more and more dissappointed that I could not listen to my music in my car. I started investigating replacing the in-dash radio with a CD player that would read MP3's. Still, this was an imperfect option for me, cause I would still have to deal with CDs which are a pain in the butt to keep from getting scratched, out of direct sunlight, away from extremes of hot and cold, etc... I had resigned myself to dealing with this, as it was certainly better than nothing...but having burned mp3 cd's in the past, I realized that 700megs of music (+/-) is but a fraction of my collection and at best, an mp3 cd player was but a fractional step in the right direction.
So, I resigned myself to spending some cash and started researching players. Then I stumbled across this guy, and I got excited. For $229 bucks I could house 20gigs worth of music. It broadcasts audio on the FM dial, so all I had to do was tune my radio station to the Neuros broadcast station and viola, music instantly available. ...it beats the hell
outta ripping apart my dash to play mp3 disks.
What's even better is that at $229 it cost less than most of the in dash mp3/CD players I was looking at. So, I took the plunge...
Haven't had a complaint yet. Works exactly as advertised. Support folk are excellent, price was great. It's not the sleekest, or sexiest player on the market, but the damn thing is cheap, versatile, and open source. Check it out if you want a solution to playing mp3's in your car. This little thing will let you play 'em anywhere. I'd take one of these over an iPod any day.
http://www.neurosaudio.com
Or cellphones that play mp3s...
Or PDAs that play mp3s...
I am currently patenting a toilet roll dispenser that connects to a network via wi-fi to play songs while you enjoy your toilet time.
All I want for Christmas is my Swiss-Army device: mp3/ogg player, PDA, cell phone, pager, and GPS.
Davak
No thanks. FM does really horrible things to audio quality. If you can't hear it, that's fine, but I can -- even on stock speakers. The most audible area is low bass -- FM radio only transmits 50 Hz-15 kHz.
Note that this is broadcast FM, but AFAIK all of the local-area broadcast devices are subject to the same limitations. Most FM stations do more compression on the signal than this, so it should still sound better than they do.
Hmmm... Well, to each his own. I hadn't noticed this to be a problem. In my car I want good sound of course, but I think the bigger problems are attributed to the poor listening environment (engine noise, wind noise, driving distractions, etc...). Any limitations in FM transmission just has not been an issue for me in my car. But, I can see how that might be an annoyance for vehicle audiophiles. Good luck!
I wonder how many people are turned off of personal digital audio players by the compromised sound quality of lossy codecs? The price per megabyte isn't nearly so attractive for those that prefer lossless quality.
When MiniDisc was new (and expensive), manufacturers targeted audiophiles while the advertising emphasized custom mixes and sound quality (even though ATRAC is also lossy). With "MP3 players," the emphasis is usually on quantity, not quality. Being able to accomodate realtime filters like DFX might be a way to find some middle ground.
I realize that most consumers either tolerate or are unaware of the fidelity loss, hence the continued dominance of the now inferior MP3 format. Still, I think that in order for this market to grow more quickly, it should educate consumers about the options available to them with these devices: CD quality if you want it, or OGG (etc.) if you want more tracks per MB.
I'm surprised that with car stereos, we're still just seeing a lot of CD players that read MP3 CDs. I'd quite prefer to keep all my music in one place like an iPod (oh, how I wish I had one). I would actually like to see more car stereos with the audio-in so that I could use an MP3 player in my car too. I wonder why that hasn't caught on. It would sure double my incentive to buy an iPod (as if there weren't incentive enough).
Life today. Uncertainty tomorrow.
The referenced articles says "...the number of paying music downloaders doubled in the first half of 2003 -- coinciding with the [RIAA] announcement that they intended to begin prosecuting file-sharers ..."
How ignorant. The RIAAs litigious behavior has
nothing to do with it. Paying downloaders increased because
sites offering to sell music increased.
--tif