Is the U.S. Music Download Boom over?

The latest report of Nielsen Music reveals that music downloads in the USA are at a turning point.

While music downloads in Germany are still going up - by 19% in the first half of the year, the numbers in the U.S. haven’t grown in the same period. It seems that the U.S. market for music downloads is saturated.

As the United States market is regarded as a predicting market for Europe, losing dynamics there is already making the music industry here in Europe nervous.

Nielsen General Manager Jean Littolff is looking for explanations: “As soon as the traditional music buyers have completed to transfer their CDs to MP3 the download potential for ‘old music’ will go down rapidly.”

There might also be other reasons to consider, says music consultant Christoph Pöschl (CEO Brand Support):
“After people have downloaded all the songs from their lives' soundtracks, it is really hard for them to find new songs and 'new old songs' that sound like the favorites they used to love in the past. Therefore recommendation management connected with people’s personal sound preference will become more important in the future in order to motivate people to listen to and buy new
'old music' and new music that sounds familiar.”