I picked this up via techcrunch: The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry reports that 15% of the global market for music sales is now download. This has risen from zero about 5 years ago. Servicing this market are 500 online legal download sites worldwide.

It’s an interesting stat because it shows you how far behind the movie downloads market is today. I’d say the % of legal movie downloads within the DVD retail market is effectively zero. Lets track forward 5 years … I’d hazard a guess it might be approaching 4, maybe 5%. In 10 years? Now that’s when it will get interesting.

Movie downloads (for sale or rental) have huge challenges to overcome. Bandwidth, studio support, content availability & playback issues all make it hard to execute well in this area. iTunes for movies is the latest attempt to kick start this market… all eyes will be on Apple to see how it goes!

In the meantime, the humble DVD will kick on strong. Long live the DVD!

Posted January 27th, 2008 under Business and Strategy.
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