Napster On Mobile Music: US, Japan Will Be Two Thirds Of Market By 2010

Napster is trying to convince US operators to offer data plans that allow the downloading of large files and support heavy users, under the expectation that the over-the-air music market is going to boom in the next few years, reports PC World. Carriers are reluctant to do so due to fears that users could swamp the network, but Napster CTO William Pence thinks that “in most cases, users would not swamp the networks in a practical sense”.

“The U.S. online music industry is about 10 percent of the entire US$34 billion global market, but will grow to about 35 percent of the market in 2010, Pence predicted, putting it just behind Japan in 2010. Even in 2010, Japan will still have a greater percentage of downloads over-the-air than the U.S.” Other figures given by Napster in the article is that the average person has downloaded 375 songs, with some people downloading up to 70,000. I’m not sure whether it’s refering to people in general (and therefore likely to include the sort of users who were fond of Napters before it went legit and started charging) or whether its refer to people who use its subscription service. Either way, it’s not a good figure to be tossing around while trying to convince operators that unlimited music downloading won’t swamp the network.

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