Since Napster and the advent of peer-to-peer sharing, the music industry has been frustrated by consumers operating outside legitimate channels.

Ad-supported models may offer a solution.

The “TEMPO Digital Music Discovery & Purchase Process” report from Ipsos MediaCT shows that in late 2008, only 19% of US digital music consumers participated in the fee-based market (that is, iTunes or Rhapsody).

The ad-supported market, represented in this study by MySpace Music, is already bigger than that, with 22% of respondents.

“The ad-supported models are proving to be an effective means of expanding the broader, legitimate market beyond just the fee-based realm,” said Karl Joyce, the report’s lead author.

When respondents were asked to imagine their music consumption habits in a world without file-sharing, ad-supported formats proved even more attractive.

Read more in emarketer >>>

Though nearly one-third of digital music downloaders and streamers in the US currently acquire songs illegally using peer-to-peer networks, new ad-supported models for music delivery are gaining momentum as an alternative and have helped to cut down on illegitimate file sharing, according to a study by Ipsos.

The annual “Digital Music Discovery & Purchase Process” study also found ad-supported models - such as the increasingly popular MySpace Music - are more palatable than file sharing to those who don’t want to pay. Such services are expected to play an increasingly important role as a legitimate channel for music delivery, Ipsos said.

Nielsen web statistics back up this claim. Traffic to MySpace Music has grown 1017% since the site’s inception last fall, the web analytics firm said.

Read more in Marketing Charts >>>

July 16, 2009: A survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 84 percent of Americans use broadcast media -- both television and radio -- for information on the economy. Print media -- newspapers, books, and magazines -- was cited by 64 percent, and the Internet by 48 percent.

Among Americans who have broadband at home, TV and radio are still the leading choice for information on the economy for 85 percent. The Internet and print media tie at 67 percent.

Said Pew, "The Internet ranks high among sources of information and advice that people are seeking during hard times, especially when it comes to their personal finances and economic circumstances. At the same time, broadcast media outpace the Internet as sources of news about national economics and broadcast sources still overshadow the Internet among all Americans for information and advice related to their personal financial circumstances."

From Radio Ink >>>

According to a recent report by The NPD Group, awareness of Twitter more than doubled in Q1, reaching a 52% awareness level among the U.S. Internet-using population, which increased from 22% awareness in Q4 of 2008. Among music buyers, awareness of Twitter reached 67% in Q1. In addition 12% of music buyers claimed to have used Twitter in the past three months, versus 8% of Web users overall.

Among the findings, 42% of Twitter users reported listening to online radio. Read more on RBR >>>

By Bob Tedeschi

Last week, I was driving through town, listening to a song on the radio that I’d never heard. It was a slightly morose indie-rock track, so I hit fast-forward and got an upbeat Ryan Adams tune. I cranked the volume, then stopped to consider what I’d just done.

I’d fast-forwarded my car radio.

Internet radio fans have been doing this sort of thing for years on their PCs, thanks to Pandora, Last.fm, Slacker, Rhapsody and other online music services that offer users far more control over what they hear. Now, though, many of these services are available anywhere — provided you have a fairly modern handset and you’re in an area with adequate cellphone coverage. Sometimes you don’t even need that...

Read more from New York Times >>>

Arbitron says that over the course of a typical week 235 million people (12+) tune-in.  That is one million more than what was included in RADAR ratings released just three months ago.  Radio reaches 92% of Persons (12+) each week, including 89% of Teens (12-17) despite the growth of iPods and other forms of new media.

From Inside Radio.

Never before have we had so many ways of discovering new music.

Though Baby Boomers sometimes lament the good old days, when you could tune into FM radio and hear an eclectic mix of tunes, that golden age of radio seems like the dark ages in comparison to what's possible with today's music-related startups and internet radio stations. In fact, today's web-based options for uncovering new tunes are so diverse and varied, you might wonder if you'll ever have time to listen to the music you're discovering.

Read on in The Star Ledger >>>

This week, ComScore published their monthly Media Metrix report. Once again, "Radio" makes it to the top ten fastest growing site categories, with an 8% increase over February (when it was also in the top ten.)

Read the full release here.

According to The NPD Group, a leader in market research for the entertainment industry, teens (age 13 to 17) acquired 19 percent less music in 2008 than they did in 2007. CD purchasing declined 26 percent and paid digital downloads fell 13 percent compared with the prior year. In the case of paid digital downloads, 32 percent of teens purchasing less digital music expressed discontent with the music that was available for purchase, while 23 percent claimed to already have a suitable collection of digital music. Twenty-four percent of teens also cited cutbacks in overall entertainment spending as a reason for buying fewer downloads.

More than half of teens (52 percent) listened to online radio in 2008, compared to just 34 percent in 2007.

Read the full release >>>

Like the cell phones that preceded them, mobile data services--in particular, mobile Internet--are becoming less a luxury and more a necessity among U.S. consumers. And the expanded use of those services (also including mobile email, multimedia messaging and photo uploading) could explode in the next two years.

Read more in Mediapost >>>

 by Caroline Krediet

"I'm in the minority on this one. All the buzz in advertising is over Facebook, Twitter and social media. Yet radio technology is burgeoning. The appointment audio of the podcast is catching on, and satellite radio, HD radio and streaming mobile radio are all gaining interest and audience. So, too, is Internet radio: according to research firm American Media Services, 38% of adults surveyed six months ago said they expected to listen to radio on the Internet at some point in the future; more recently, the figure was 48%..."

Read more in Mediapost >>>

By MediaFuturist Gerd Leonard

"Over the course of the next 5-6 years, the importance of getting Air-Play on terrestrial i.e. traditional, programmed radio will drastically decline, as people are switching to the Internet (and by extension, to each other) as the #1 way of sourcing music programs. We will see a drastic increase in fragmentation as people will do anything from carefully customizing each track in their lists to just listen to 'what's on' - and there will be 100s of permutations in between. From total engagement to total passive consumption, there will be offers covering each - and they will all be connected."

Read more at Mediafuturist.com

Marina, Calif. - Listening to Web radio music stations increased by 37.6% in 2008, to 6.67 billion hours, and in-stream audio sold against ad-supported cumulative listening hours was up 46% to $74 million, according to a report from AccuStream iMedia Research.

Read more in Digital Media Wire.

Strategy Analytics has issued a report predicting the mobile music market will grow from $10.6 billion in 2008 to $16.8 billion in 2013. Last week the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries (IFPI) released a report indicating that global revenues for digital music grew by 25 percent last year to $3.7 billion, the difference being in what is calculated and what is considered digital music. IFPI only counts the revenue which goes to the labels (which Strategy Analytics put at about 30 percent), and for that reason has never counted monophonic and polyphonic ringtones which generally pay composer royalties but not performance royalties. Realtones and mastertones are counted by IFPI.

Read more in MocoNews

Internet and mobile services are expected to score against handheld video game players and satellite radio amid an economic recession, according to results from a Forrester Research survey released Monday.

Read more in CNET

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Those all-important "digital influencers" actually get their information from magazines, newspapers, TV and radio.

That's according to an MS&L survey whose results will be released tomorrow. The study, developed by MS&L's influencer-marketing unit IM, reveals that some 84% of digital influencers go online to find out more about something only after first reading about it in magazines and newspapers or hearing about it on TV or the radio.

Read more in Ad Age

"Internet radio may save rock and roll...So says Music Industry Veteran Danny Goldberg in this video. In it he’s speaking about his newly published book Bumping into Geniuses, which is a tell-all about the music industry from his personal perspective. Among other things, he was manager of Nirvana. "

Read more in Jennifer Lane's Audio4Cast blog.

“Atlantic, a unit of Warner Music Group, says it has reached a milestone that no other major record label has hit: more than half of its music sales in the United States are now from digital products, like downloads on iTunes and ring tones for cellphones.”

Read more in The New York Times 

What should have been blindingly obvious before, what with Pandora, Last.fm, and other music discovery services helping consumers find music to love, was that the future of the music industry is discovery. Now that Apple has made it easy to purchase music, the next step for making a big industry even bigger is to help consumers find new products to consume.

Read more on CNET

Eric Benderoff of the Chicago Tribune examines the shifts in digital music. Specifically, the "internet radio on the go" trend, "emerging as a potentially disruptive market force, putting into question the need for a satellite radio service or even the purchase of music. The reason: The music—and sometimes news, sports talk or a favorite out-of-town radio station—is free, and such Web-based feeds are starting to spread across the device landscape like weeds after a storm."

Read more on "New Ways to Dial into Radio Stations."

A new Jupiter Research study looks at "music influencers," tastemakers who are influential online among digital music fans. Jupiter describes them as eight percent of overall online users, who "participate enthusiastically in a broad range of music-related activities online." According to Jupiter, "word of mouth and radio are the most common means of music discovery among" music influencers.

Read more in FMQB.