Music downloads giving way to streaming services

Music downloads giving way to streaming services - Yahoo! News: "Apple remains the world's dominant digital music retailer, but it's a distinction that might be of decreasing significance as the digital market transforms from a model based on a la carte downloads to one of streaming access. Indeed, Apple's late-year acquisition of streaming music provider Lala points to the company's own expected shift in that direction.

The migration from downloads to streams is driven by several factors. First is the realization that the digital download market is beginning to level off.

While digital downloads account for the vast majority of digital music revenue, they aren't even close to making up for the lost revenue from falling CD sales. That's why labels and digital music services are turning more attention to streaming music access services that carry either a monthly fee or provide opportunities to 'upsell' to other products.

The download-to-own model has trumped streaming in part because only downloads give music fans the kind of control over their music that they want. Want to listen to downloads on a PC and a hand-held media player? Until recently, the only way for most consumers to do so was to buy a download.

That's changing with new advancements like smart-phone apps that allow on-demand streaming of music not stored on the device, Web-connected TVs and stereo systems like the Sonos and such services as Spotify, MOG and Lala that have emerged to take advantage of this evolution.

The ease of use and flexibility of this music-in-the-cloud paradigm makes the old iTunes model of downloading proprietary software and transferring files from device to device seem archaic."