Japan To Overtake US As Primary Spender On Mobile Music — Screen Digest

Screen Digest has released some predictions for the mobile music market, and the most surprising line in the release is this one: “The global market for OTA mobile music was worth Euro 166m (US$226.3 million), with the lion’s share of revenue generated by single track รก la carte downloads in the US”. It seems this figures is for full-track downloads to mobile phones over the operator network. The total Japanese mobile music market in 2006 was close to US$400 million (which includes ringtones, admitedly). Screen Digest responded to an e-mail I sent and confirmed that its figure does not include ringtones, and that it estimates that the US OTA mobile music market is bigger than that of Japan.

Screen Digest does predict that Japan will dominate the OTA music download market, claiming almost 60 percent of the market by 2012, which it predicts will by that stage be 1.6 billion euros (US$2.2 billion). “The Japanese prefer to download music tracks over-the-air directly to their mobile phones, taking advantage of well established high speed mobile networks which give them the capability to download content quickly. In comparison, European and American consumers choose to download music tracks online and then side-load them to their phones.” It goes on to predict that subscription services will account for two-thirds of total mobile music revenues worldwide, with the rest being split between pay-per-download and music videos. Subscription services come in two different types: Book club where consumers download a certain number each month and keep them, and rental where they get an unlimited number but have to continue the subscription in order to listen to them. The book club model is predicted to dominate in Japan, which will make up the majority of mobile music subscriptions worldwide.

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