First it was, "Fans want to feel it."
Then it was, "Fans want to own it."
Now it's, "Why own when I can save?"
One of the unforeseen impacts of the global economic downturn on the music industry is the accelerated rate of consumers' adoption of streaming music... And this means trouble for the already wounded music industry.
It takes 150-200 plays of a song before the content owner earns royalties on par with one download. Content owners typically get paid 70 cents per download and half a penny per stream. How long does it take the average fan to stream a song 150 times—six months? Twelve months? Longer? There's the cash-flow issue.
- Robb McDaniels, CEO of digital distributor INgrooves in a Billboard op-ed
