Music is universal. Everyone loves music. Doctors, lawyers, kids, moms, daddies, old people, babies, everyone loves music. Most people prefer listening to music than to making music. Online music downloading has been enormously popular. The industry has struggled a little to reign in illegal music downloading. That battle appears to have been won.

Online music markets are set to grow. By making music accessible and with prices set at a reasonable cost, defacto industry standards are being put in place. The defacto industry standards are coming from Apple, Real, and Microsoft. Service providers have 500,000 songs available for download. Celebrity play lists are one way of attracting listeners to a site. Online music providers feature exclusive tracks from major artists.

Online music single costs range from$.79 per song to $0.99 per song and $10 for an album. People can compose their own albums. As prices for songs drop to $0.29 per song by 2009, markets will achieve new growth. The music industry is set to take some lessons from the DVD industry. The broad acceptance of the Internet is creating demand for a means of music media content delivery. Digital music media is set to leverage the Internet transmission system. Consumer markets have accelerated demand for sophisticated communications transmission.

Apple has achieved a dominant position in the music industry by making downloadable music easily available. The company now accounts for one percent of the music industry revenue. It is well positioned to address growth in online music. Virtually all music will be downloaded by the end of the forecast period. Traditional retail outlets have failed to address the changes brought by the Internet. A market of downloadable music services includes Apple iTunes service. Hewlett Packard is including Apple music software on its machines. HP is positioned to help Apple expand its online music service beyond Macintosh computers to the PC market that uses Windows.

Rhapsody offers unrestricted access for file-sharing. People can listen to hundreds of songs or hundreds of albums for the same low price. That flexibility is helping make Rhapsody the leading online music service for consumers. Rhapsody has an unlimited listening approach designed to encourage subscribers to explore a wide variety of musical artists and styles. By paying $9.95 for unlimited access to the service library of 28,000 albums, people get a bargin.

Napster offers a free trial to get people to try the fee-based music downloading service. Napster features top streams. Napster offers access to tracks. Napster premium permits listening to and downloading 500,000 tracks for $10 per month.
500,000 songs from all genres of music are available. Napster seeks to make the digital music experience is easy and fun for all music consumers. Integrating popular devices with the service allows Napster to make it easy to move digital music onto a device directly. Napster focus is on consumer choice. The nucleus of the digital music service is positioned to ensure that music fans have high-quality experiences. Individual needs are a priority. Over 60 devices from a variety of manufacturers are available that support WMA. Napster provides music in WMA format. This gives Napster customers the combination of device, a music service, and a flexible, high quality music format. Markets at $359.1 million in 2003, are expected to be $14.7 billion by 2009.

Key Topics In This Report Include:
- Online Music Markets
- Online Music Forecasts
- Revenue Model
- Restructuring Networks For Advanced Multimedia Services
- Information Sharing Between Different Environments
- Music Is Universal
- Streaming Media Segments
- Digital Online Music Standards
- Oktv® Child Health Controls
- Recording Industry Association Of America
- Ip Network Delay And Congestion
- Network Strategy
- Telecom Market Structure
- Challenge Of Broadband
- Media Hosting
- Operating System Focus On Media Delivery

Companies Profiled in this report include:
- Market Leaders
Online Music
Apple Computer
RealPlayer
Online Music Subscription Services
RealPlayer
Microsoft
Apple Computer
Online Music Advertising
Microsoft
Real Networks
Apple Computer

- Other Market Participants
BuyMusic.com Cisco
CNET Networks Hewlett Packard
Liquid Audio Liquid Digital Media
Loudeye Macromedia
Matsushita Electric Industrial MontVista Software
Music Choice Musicmatch
Music Now/Full Audio MP3.com
Music Net Roxio/Napster
Sonic Solutions Viewpoint
Wal-Mart Stores Zoran

From:http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/54569

SINGAPORE--Revenues for digital music downloads in Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) is expected to hit US$307 million by 2004 despite bandwidth constraints, expensive labeled digital music and "rampant piracy."

Last year, sales from online music downloads in the region amounted to less than US$2 million while online sales of physical format music reached US$27 million.

Growth is expected to come from a maturing base of Asian Web users, improving Internet infrastructure and more sophisticated online music offerings, International Data Corp Asia Pacific said in a statement today.

"The physical music format will remain dominant although digital music downloads will be the fastest growing segment of the (overall) market," said IDC senior business-to-consumer analyst (Internet Research) Jasmine Soo.

The Napster revolution has shown that consumers want to develop their own customized digital music libraries, Soo observed.

To tap into the burgeoning market, IDC believes that online music sites need to explore offline payment options, partner broadband access providers for faster downloads and consider the music-on-demand business model, among others. IDC did not elaborate and could not be contacted at press time.

The market research firm also believes that online music sites need to provide a variety of music titles, regardless of label, in order to succeed.

Moving forward, IDC sees four types of online music sites emerging: independent, single-label, multiple-label, and multiple-label peer-to-peer networks.

Peer-to-peer networks allow PC users to exchange files with one another without going through a centralized server as demonstrated by online music-swapping service Napster.

Last October, German media conglomerate Bertelsmann announced an alliance with Napster to develop a new subscription service to let Net users swap songs copyrighted by the recording giant.

Members of the proposed service would be able to search and download songs--legally--from Bertelsmann's entire catalog of artistes, which includes Santana, the Dave Matthews Band, Christina Aguilera and Whitney Houston.

"As the online music industry takes shape, record labels will need to develop innovative strategies to evolve with a rapidly changing market environment," Soo said.

Meanwhile, online sales of physical format music (in the form of CDs and cassettes) is expected to reach US$433 million by 2004. This will account for 59 percent of the total online music sales of US$740 million in Asia Pacific (excluding Japan), IDC said.

IDC’s survey of 40,000 Asian Internet users last year indicated that music CDs and cassettes were the second most common selling products online in Asia after books.

From:http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/business/0,39044229,10034533,00.htm