A new study released today seems to have confirmed what most folks had already assumed re: digital music consumption. Thumbplay Music, a cloud-based music service that has both a desktop and mobile (iPhone/Android/BlackBerry) client, reveals that 70 percent of respondents have curtailed their peer-to-peer music sharing as a result of using Thumbplay Music. In other words, when exposed to a easy-to-use, working alternative people are more than happy to move away from less legal alternatives.
As I say in pretty much every music-related post these days: finally! Back in the day, when the iTunes Music Store first debuted (only on the Mac, remember), you’d see comments on tech sites along the lines of, “Why has it taken so long for something like this to come out?” No more having to troll early BitTorrent search engines for the latest album by Whomever.
And then we progressed beyond the à la carte download services to the new streaming models, where you could listen to anything (provided it’s in the catalogue) so long as you had an Internet connection. The proliferation of high-speed mobile networks only hastened this transition.
(And yes, I fully recognize that asking for a solid mobile connection may sometimes be asking too much, but this will only improve. Hopefully!)
Probably even better news for the music industry is that 18 percent of respondents said that Tumbplay Music had re-ignited their interest in music as a whole. A sort of, ”I’m-done-with-music-oh-wait-this-is-a-pretty-neat-service” kind of thing.
Which must be music to the industry’s ears.
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Well met, traveller. From Parts Unknown, Nicholas Deleon has dinally decided to roll a Worgen Priest. Maybe he’ll tweet every time he dings a level?