In the Philippines, it is known that music piracy is quite rampant. A question that usually gets asked is whether the selling of digital music online can possibly prosper? Looking at the growing number of e-commerce sites that sells and ships Filipino music, it is fair to say that there is market overseas.
Locally, despite the popularity of the Internet and television as an entertainment medium, radio lives on and this is where most of us get our dose of music everyday. With the popularity of music gadget players, this further encourages it.
In the Filipino Internet User Report Part 2 (released in 2003), this is the data that I got:
- 28% of Internet users spend online time listening to music.
- While offline, they listen to the music around 7 to 10 hours a week.
- Radio listening takes 7.8 to 8.2 hours per week.
Of course, the challenge there is how many listeners of music will be willing to buy online. What do you think?
I think a lot of groundwork has to be done first on the basics before there would be a significant amount of people doing online purchases. Plus the fact that credit card penetration in our country is not that big. Everything's growing, but slowly.
ReplyDeleteThanks Aileen for sharing your thoughts. Assuming that Filipinos based in the Philippines can't buy online, but those producing them in the Philippines, can they sell it abroad as music download?
ReplyDeleteI think there is potential in selling OPM abroad as downloads. I think the key would be getting them to hear snippets of a song and communicating with them the local trends.
ReplyDeleteIf you could get statistics on the Filipino online community based abroad (per country would be even greater), it would help to learn the widest possible Filipino online buying public.
ReplyDeleteOnline piracy though still plays a huge factor as a hindrance from Filipinos buying online. Checking out multiply alone. People post entire albums and their favorite songs there not realizing the harm they're creating to the music industry. Instead, what they see is "it's cute on my blog" or "it suits my webpage's personality".
@aileenapolo - I agree with you. The challenge as well in selling online is discovering new markets. Usually, people who'll buy you are likely to know you already. I guess if the sites also makes a special, like music of the month kind of subscription, it can help promote unplugged artist and earn as well. Perhaps creative retailing will be key to this.
ReplyDelete@jaydj - i think that is worth pursuing. How many respondents do you think will suit per country? For Multiply users, I guess the social network should really have to reconsider its policy of putting that feature online in the first place.