Remember when Apple bought LaLa and the world went upside down over the possibility of a streaming version of iTunes? Well, it turns out all that hype is well grounded, people really do want their iTunes to be in the cloud.
New data has been released today that measures and captures potential user interest in free and paid iTunes streaming. It should be noted that most iTunes customers are not accustomed to such an offering, and while other companies have been experimenting in the space, it has been to little avail.
NPD did polling and found that 25% of iTunes users would be interested in an ‘anywhere’ streaming option for music that they already have. That works out to around 13 to 15 million people in the US. These people are more or less saying ‘yes’ to the question of whether they would like to be able to stream music they already own to other devices, a no brainer.
However, if you ask the same group how many would be willing to pay for a streaming services, say $10 a month for an unlimited streaming package, some 7 to 8 million people seem to be potential customers. That works out to $80 million a month in revenue, or about one billion dollars a year out of the gate.
The market potential here is gigantic, will Apple capitalize on it?
No, I don’t. I want my music to be in a file on my PC so that I can transfer it to my phone or my iPod or on a CD or move it on another PC or edit it for my own listening. As Steve Jobs said, I like to own my music.
I wouldn’t mind iTunes having a streaming option. Ever since Spotify became available in my country I have completely stopped using iTunes for music playback. The only time I boot it up is to synchronise my iPod and scrobble the songs to my Last.fm, and I only use the iPod because 3G reception isn’t good enough to provide me with uninterrupted streaming of Spotify on my phone yet.
The one feat a system like streaming iTunes would need in my eyes however, is a subscription system like Spotify: listening to songs, wether you own them on your hard drive or not, for a reasonable monthly fee. Spotify’s doing good at this but with Apple’s market share they could really make this big.
The benefits of such a service are enormous and there are several players already offering this including psonar, audiobox and tunesbag.
And, in the case of Psonar, unlimited free storage and steaming.