This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Digital
Most of the average digital music collection goes unplayed
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 27 May 2011
Tech firm Music WithMe, who provide tools to help users transfer their iTunes collections to non-Apple devices – especially Android phones – say they have been monitoring the play counts of music collections transferred via their system, and have found that on average 81% of a user’s MP3 collection never gets played – ie 81% of tracks would have a zero play count.
Writing on their blog, Music WithMe, revealed “The average iTunes library has 5,409 songs of which 4,195 have never been played. Put another way: we listen to about 19% of the music we own”.
Of course such a claim might not account for the circumstances in which a user’s iTunes play stats would reset, but as a general stat it’s possibly not that surprising, especially for the P2P generation, many of whom downloaded huge quantities of unlicensed music via P2P networks more the prestige of having the biggest MP3 collection rather than with any intent of listening to all the tunes.
Quite what the industry can do with a stat like that though, I’m not sure. Though, if all those unplayed tracks were sold rather than nabbed from P2P, I suppose it does suggest some artists might benefit more from a la carte download systems rather than pay-per-play streaming services.
