With music streaming market in Australia being so saturated, getting Aussies to the point where they’ll put their hard-earned cash and place value into music streaming is a big challenge for the industry right now, argued Colin Blake, international head of marketing for streaming service Rdio.
With the likes of Pandora, Spotify, Tidal, Guvera, Rdio and others on our shores, this market saturation has caused Blake to argue Australia is the most competitive market in the world.
“Certainly the clutter and saturation affects the thing moving forward, or affects the opportunities moving forward, because the more cluttered it is the more confusion that can be caused for the consumer,” he told B&T.
“For Australia in particular there are bunch of things here that contribute to us not getting to that point faster or sooner than we like.”
Over saturation of the market, unrealistic pricing and Australia’s heavily regulated data plans are reasons why our music streaming market is moving so much slower then the rest of the world.
This market saturation creates an environment where music lovers feel overwhelmed by choice and ultimately don’t invest the time into trying out different subscriptions. Users start to question which service is for them, which one suits their needs and price range.
“The best thing you can do is spend time getting into it, you want to learn about the capabilities of the technology, just downloading an app isn’t good enough to get you to the value position,” said Blake.
“For the greater good of the industry, you want people to see a value and be willing to pay to access all-in music services, that gives them multiple different functionalities and multiple different opportunities.”
Rdio has introduced a subscriptions service, Rdio’s Select, which is a mid-price level option. A Select subscription lets users stream ad-free radio stations with unlimited skips and offline downloads to a maximum of 25 songs, for $5.99 a month. Blake said that 25 downloads is “an amount that will work for the majority of your everyday music listeners, but also something that gives them enough of a sample that they feel they’re getting good value out of it”.
“What we’re trying to accomplish is being able to expose people to a curated experiences, as well as an on-demand experience, in a way that makes it a little more affordable and cheaper.
“This little streaming world that we’re in is ever evolving and will continue to do so for quite some time. Having another product like this out in the market is just another step further to making it work for more people.”
