And 7-8 million of them in the US might pay for it.
A survey of US iTunes users by market research firm NPD has found a strong demand for a cloud-based music service from Apple, where people can store their collections online and access them from multiple devices.
NPD says that based on the survey, 13-15 million US iTunes users would be strongly interested in a free cloud service of this nature, while 7-8 million would pay $10 a month for it.
"If the consumers who indicated strong interest in a paid subscription actually adopted one of those services at $10 per month, the market opportunity is close to $1 billion in the first year, which is roughly two-thirds the revenue garnered by the current pay-per-download model," says NPD's Russ Crupnick.
The report comes as the music industry tries to get to grips with the implications of cloud-based services. Apple's plans to launch one are still pure speculation, although Google has announced plans for its own, based around Android.
However, as the arguments at a debate held last night in London show, the music industry is still figuring out what licensing headaches might be presented by cloud services.
Article continues belowAdvertisement
"The music industry know they have five years, maybe ten years of the CD being the main format," said Omnifone's Rob Lewis.
"The cloud is the future. The only issue, as it always is with the music industry, is it’s so bloody fragmented, it takes ages to get the business models right."
