NPD: Streaming iTunes Could Be Billion-Dollar Industry In First Year

John Brownlee ()

NPD: Streaming iTunes Could Be Billion-Dollar Industry In First Year

Ever since Apple purchased Lala late last year, iTunes users have been expecting to see their music collections make a jump to the cloud (often referred to as iTunes Live).

More surprising, though, is how many users are actively looking forward to a new, streaming iTunes: according to NPD’s polling of 3,862 iTunes users, about 25% are interested in a new streaming library function. Extrapolated upon iTunes’ population as a whole, that’s about 13 million users in the United States alone.

Even more interesting, according to NPD, is that roughly half of those users would be willing to pay up to $10 a month for the service, providing it supported multiple devices. That’s about 7 to 8 million iTunes users, adding up to a billion dollar market in the first year.

I was hoping that whatever form a streaming iTunes took, it would be free, but obviously that’s wishful thinking: Apple’s already got a huge number of users chomping at the bit to stream their entire libraries wirelessly to all of their computers and iOS devices. Of course they’ll end up charging.

My big question is what this means for Apple’s iPod-line. If iTunes goes into the cloud this year, does this mean we can expect a 3G-capable iPod Touch at this year’s September iPod event? In the context of a streaming iTunes, the lack of an always-connected iPod in Apple’s device line-up seems like a hole that would need to be filled.

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Would you pay $10 a month for streaming iTunes?

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About the author

John BrownleeJohn Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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Posted in iTunes, News |

  • Yargo

    Personally — no— I wouldn’t pay. Not $10, not $1. Why? Because I’ve already bought every song I’ve ever liked and have them on my iMac and iPhone. When I hear a new song I like (rarely, most new music sucks) I instantly buy it and add it to my collection. I just checked my iTunes: Last year I bought 19 songs. I realize that I’m not typical of the new music generation but there’s my thoughts.

  • Oldandintheway

    Eventually all the monthly fees are going to send me into bankruptcy. If I could join HULU and drop cable that would be a savings. But I’m going to be “$10 a monthed” to death.

  • http://www.grinningidiot.com JAYnLA

    I don’t know why this is completely uninteresting to me as a service. I like my files down here with me.

  • jzar

    To bad iTunes Live can already be found in the store as in “iTunes: Live from SoHo”. It’s the same exact logo.

    http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewMovie?id=379653156&s=143441

  • Joel

    Thus begins the decline of Apple. I really do not believe this is the direction they will head. Steve has made it clear what drives Apple, great products. I really doubt he will allow a third of the customers to decide for the rest of us what they will do. You can just look at certain countries, politically, and see what happens when the minority rules the majority. They usually do not last. We will see, though. The whole thing makes no sense to me seeing as though other companies already do this. Apple rarely follows from the front.

  • Maxx Wyler

    Having my music stored in the cloud does not interest me at all. It is just fine down here with me. I doubt that it would be unlimited storage, so to store my 50gb itunes library in the cloud would probably cost me a fortune. Next issue would be how do I get it in the cloud? Depending on my connection speed, it could take a month or two.

    I really doubt that this would be the way Apple would go anyway, it just makes no sense. If an “iTunes Live” service appeared I believe that it would be more of an on demand, rented music, streaming to your device sort of thing. More on the lines of Rhapsody or Pandora -but “different”.

  • charli

    Actually John there is NO proof that Apple would charge

    As for the rest, it is very likely that Apple will one day go to the cloud in a LaLa like way but they have to work out deals with the labels.

    It is very possible that the labels will only allow them to stream those things you bought from itunes and not this ‘upload what you own’ business since they want to stop folks torrenting etc. But for many that’s still a lot of stuff. And if they are able to do the 10cent streaming buys that would work for several more. At the least I”m sure they will not upload tracks that aren’t in the system.

    Right now the key things that Apple is probably looking at are the one time full play tech (something folks have been screaming about for years) and ‘genius’ like recommends and ‘mix it up’ features LaLa had that would improve the itunes feature. And perhaps the ‘follow’ feature.

    My hope is that they haven’t dumped the old user records and if something comes up soon they can set it up so we can link our Apple IDs and our LaLa accounts with follows and not have to start from scratch on those. And if they do allow ‘uploads’ allow us to transfer that over without doing it all again.

    Oh and Maxx, if they go the way of LaLa you don’t have to worry about space. Basically the program matched your file list to their catalog and essentially gave you access to their copy of the song. Think like a giant jukebox where you have unlimited plays on certain tracks.

    I had about 20GB and even with my really slow computer it only took maybe 4 hours to scan and set up.

  • Blake

    With 32 and 64 gig models with hopes of a 128 sometime before the rapture, I dont need access in the cloud. There’s not a snowball’s changwon he’ll I’d pay to maybe add a couple songs here and there while the bulk of what ilisten to, if not played on my favorite Internet radio stations, is happy already on my device. With plenty of room to spare on my new 64g

  • DJ ChillB

    I copy my 60gb library onto a USB hard drive and us it with my Numark decks to DJ off, cloud storage would put an end to that. So I will stick to the oldskool way of having it locally.

    I work in some places that are like black holes with phone signal, 3G is not fully rolled out in the UK and you only get it in the large towns and cities, could you imagine turning round to a bride and telling her the first dance will be a few hours late as your downloading the track from Apple’s data centre via GPRS at 2-3kbs. That would go down well

  • http://www.psonar.com Richard Urwin

    There are several companies already offering services that do exactly this – psonar, audiobox and tunesbag are examples.