Creating Experience in Digital Music Services: The Role of Personal Innovativeness and Mobility – Creating Experience in Digital Music Services

Introduction

With the developments on the Internet and increased use of smart devices, the music industry has witnessed an enormous change which ends up with the use of growing online music or music streaming services. Online music services or music streaming services are web-based services that enable users to play songs or/and download songs to their computers or mobile devices (tablets, smartphones) with or without a subscription fee. Unlike the traditional music industry, online music services are free or ask for a cheap monthly price, enable creating own music library without downloading to a computer or other devices (Wlömert and Papies, 2016).

In 2017, 54% of global recorded music revenue comes from streaming and digital (especially from paid subscription audio streaming); and streaming revenues have increased by 41.1% compared to the last year (IFPI, 2018). In 2017, global digital music revenue was 2.8 billion U.S. dollars (Statista, 2017a). The revenue of music streaming worldwide has been growing and it is assumed to be 6.22 billion U.S. dollars in 2020 (Statista, 2017a). According to Statista (2018), two most popular music streaming services in the U.S. as of March are Apple Music and Spotify with 49.5 million and 47.7 million monthly users respectively. In Turkey, music streaming revenue (including subscription-based without any advertising and ad-supported unlimited access) is 25 million U.S. dollars in 2018 and is expected to increase by 6.5% in 2022 (Statista, 2017b). Despite the adoption of music streaming is low in Turkey, there is a growth potential in the future as the number of users is expected to increase by 17.6% between 2018 and 2022 (Statista, 2017b). Therefore, the Turkish consumers’ data of music streaming service adoption behavior promises a crucial information for all international service providers that seek for new profitable markets to enter and reaching for potential consumers, especially in the developing countries such as Turkey, India, Azerbaijan and China where there is high demand for consumption and high growth rate. Understanding of consumption patterns of developing countries will be helpful for managers to better serve consumers according to their wants and preferences.