Many argue that cloud music model is the future of streaming listening. After all, cloud streaming media and wireless syncing would allow you to access music anywhere, anytime, from any device including your mp3, computer, home system, phone, and more. By simply logging in online, you could access to your entire music catalog without sacrificing storage space on your device. Recent analysis from Forrester Research, however, contests the necessity for such a service for lack of market, reporting that it “expects users will continue to access [their music library] from a device of choice rather than a range of devices.”
The study,“360 Music Experiences: Use the Cloud to Target Device Use Orbits,” found that the leading device for music streaming remained the home computer, with 41.6 percent of digital music consumption, followed by MP3 players at 32.5 percent, music-enabled phones at 12.1 percent, and home streaming devices at 11.1 percent. More than this, the study found that those consumers are relatively loyal to their single preferred device.
According to Forrester, “only 23 percent listened to music on both their PC and MP3 player…while only nine percent used both a PC and mobile phone and only five percent of consumers accessed music on all four.”
Of the Forrester survey respondents listening to music via mobile phones, 63 percent were aged 18-24. Is the growing market of young adults promising enough for Google or Apple to offer cloud services? Although Rolling Stone Magazine acknowledges that 58 percent of readers have no interest in the present online music-subscription services, they agree that a portable option is an entirely different game.
Apple specifically has great potential to salvage this platoform by offering something that already established cloud services like Rdio lack; Rdio and others are limited because you have to create a completely new library in their environment. On the other hand, many people already use iTunes to manage their computer music libraries and iPods. If Apple were to create cloud integration of one’s already established music library into the mix, cloud streaming would certainly catch on more quickly. Such a service would also go a long way to satisfy users’ gripes about the distance between their MacBooks, iPhones, and iPads.
