Post date: Aug 23, 2010 2:10:50 AM
This is an interesting report from Indie Ranch which I did not find until now (its dated 31 Mar 09),
"Listening to internet radio streams will continue to have explosive growth. We are now projecting almost 150 million overall weekly listeners to this medium by 2010. As terrestrial radio continues to develop custom internet channels and successfully markets its main channel streams, our forecast is for these terrestrial radio simulcasts to become a larger part of all internet listening growing from about 20% of all internet listening in 2006 to 40% by 2020." -- (Bridge Ratings Feb. 21, 2007). Internet radio will generate ad revenues of $19.7 billion in 2020, equal to those of terrestrial radio in 2006, according to a Bridge Ratings press release issued in August 2007."
150 million listeners means ONLY 150 million listeners listening in at that particular time. It does not mean that there are or will be only 150 million listeners in the whole of the world. But even if we take it as 150 million listeners, that is a whole lot of hardware and services that can be sold. Say 1% of them buy internet radios, which on the average cost US$100. This is already a market of US$150 million (per percentage point or per US$100 anyways). Will people buy internet radio products and services? Absolutely not! They want it free. Just like iTunes ........
That was ill-disguised irony. Whether they will purchase a dedicated internet radio player depends mostly on what manufacturers and service providers can cook up. Like iTunes! My opinion is that people will. Run of the mill PCs are not optimized for sound and those that are, need to share-time with a whole bunch of other apps, like StarCraft II and home work. So you got more than one PC at home and we are back to the age-old question. Can the PC replace every thing? This question has already been answered in the Consumer Electronics industry. We do not buy DVD players to substitute for PCs and vice-versa. Neither do we buy PCs to substitute for our 100" AMOLED Enhanced HD TV. Do we buy mobile phones in place of portable internet radios?
The numbers are there, the market will be there. Who cometh to the feast?