News
Mobile full track music worth €166 million
Tim Green Apr 30 2007, 3:45pm
The global market for OTA mobile full track music was worth €166 million in 2006, claims Screen Digest.
The market is clearly still in its infancy and is dwarfed by a global ringtone market variously estimated to be worth up to $4bn. It also lags way behind the online full track music sector, which the media analyst estimates to be almost six times bigger at €932 million.
Screen Digest's digital music specialist Dan Cryan believes the imminent launch of the Apple iPhone sets up an intriguing battle of business models. He said: “This is a really exciting time for mobile music…on the one hand we have iPhone, the first generation of which doesn’t lend itself it to over-the-air music downloads.
On the other we have subscription and á la carte downloads being launched by operators and digital music providers. These represent very different approaches to buying music for your mobile.”
Mobile OTA music is currently dominated by one-off downloads – as opposed to subscriptions – with most sales coming from the US region.
Screen Digest forecasts that the global OTA music download market will reach €1.6bn by 2012 and that Japan will be the biggest market at €950 million. The online music market will be worth €3.9bn.
