As reported by The Star, the latest Canadian Nielsen Music 360 report has revealed exactly how much Canadians are willing to to spend each month for unlimited streaming of music without advertising, something that has been a major concern for analysts, record labels, and online streaming services for quite a while. Turns out the majority of poll respondents said they would be willing to pay $6.20 per month (on average) or up to $7.80 for high quality audio.
The numbers seem to lie somewhere in the middle of the range of options currently offered by different music streaming services in Canada. Spotify offers a $9.99 per month premium version, Tidal provides subscriptions for either $9.99 or $19.99 per month, while Rdio, who recently introduced a new $3.99 subscription tier called Rdio Select in Canada, also charges $9.99 for its ad-free on-demand service. The new plan also lets subscribers download 25 songs and replace them once per day.
This is the coach class version, if we were an airline — and, up till now, the only seats available on airlines were business class,” said Rdio CEO Anthony Bay in a recent phone interview. Bay said the new tier, less than the cost of a latte, he says, was essential, in part, because the average listener spends only around $45 on music annually. “Although it’s a tremendous value, the challenge with the $9.99 (monthly) price point is it’s more than most people have historically spent on music,” he said.
Nielsen’s research also highlights that the Canadian consumer market for music streaming services is growing quite rapidly. The streaming volume is up 94% in the region since Nielsen began tracking streaming in July 2014.
“The number of Canadians who reported streaming music in the past year grew to 71 per cent. And streamers skewed young; teens spent twice as much time streaming music as the general Canadian population”.
The study was compiled after polling 3,500 consumers aged 13 and up during April 2015.
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I’m willing to pay $5 tops!
I’d pay $10 to stream music more if I had a better data plan that didn’t screw my plan up. I’m paying $75 for unlimited north america wide calling, texting, MMS, visual voicemail, caller ID, and 5GB of data. Right now I survive on 5GB per month of data but I go over once and a while and that’s without streaming music.
I think $10 a month is great to have access to (most of) the whole itunes music library and I can download (rather than stream when on cellular).
At the cost of 1 album a month, I think it’s reasonably priced. And the family deal is excellent!
The Family Plan is what Apple wants people to jump on. It’s a crazy deal compared to what’s offered by others at that pricepoint. Now, about that Canadian pricing and when it will be revealed…
Yes, 10$ is the cost of an album, but what percentage of people buy one album per month? I may buy one or two album per year.
Yes, you have access to the whole library, but who realistically does?
This is sort of the point… if people aren’t spending that much money on music, yet listen to a lot, then artists aren’t getting paid. I’m more than happy to pay that much to have access to anything (mostly) on the itunes store to help contribute to artists as well as being able to discover new music without buying albums (I’ve bought lots of albums and then ended up not really liking them that much)
I’m going to guess canada will be $12/month
I like a lot of rare stuff, that I don’t expect to find on most, if any services, so for that reason I’m out.
The integration with my current music library in iTunes is likely what will draw me to Apple Music. Although Apple’s 256kbps AAC compression is another big factor for me. I much prefer the way AAC compression sounds compared to MP3 compression.