Supply and Demand of Online Music Streaming - Essay Example

Now, people can access their favorite music through internet by paying no or comparatively low prices to the suppliers. (Amberg, and Schröder. 2007). The online music industry is experiencing another revolution phase due to the development of technology and invention of Smartphones with a capacity to run online streaming any where through 4G connection. Initially, online paid music downloading facility was provided by the Apple’s iTunes in 2003, but it was a cumbersome task to download the music and then run it, therefore the online music industry players had started to develop such applications and platforms, where people can directly stream their favorite music without keeping them in their PCs or Mobile phones storage.

For this purpose, online radio platforms, i.e. Pandora and Spotify have been developed to provide an online streaming facility to the music lovers over their computers and Smartphones. Streaming services are providing almost all sorts of music to their customers and people can access more than million of songs through a single click. Online radios, like Pandora and iTunes Radio, have chosen what the customers want to hear and these firms generate their revenues through advertisements. Whereas, other firms like Deezer and Spotify, offer a collection of 20 to 30 million songs on annual or monthly subscription basis and charge premium prices to their customers.

Due to these changes the sales of record labels have decreased by 4% as compared to the last year, where on the other hand online streaming firms like Spotify has earned more than $1 billion in revenues. (Bhattacharjee, Gopal, Lertwachara, and Marsden. 2007). However, the overall online streaming industry was accounted for 21% of the total music industry revenues in 2013, which showed a very rapid growth in last 5 years. ( Hodgkins, 2014) Due to the high trend of Smartphones and development in the mobile phone services sector, i.e. the