If mobile devices were available during the 60s and 70s, I can only imagine what the numbers would look like, regarding revenue from mobile music platforms. However, according to eMarketer, they are not looking too bad this year either. Better yet, eMarketer predicts a pretty significant growth in revenue from mobile music by 2016, which is their year of choice for their countless predictions and forecasts. Here is their exact prediction, from their article which was published today:
Advertising revenues, which already make up the bulk of US mobile music revenues, will gain an even greater share in the coming years, eMarketer forecasts, and by 2016 will account for more than 86% of all such revenues.
They report that as of today, the percentage of revenues is not really anywhere near that, at 69%. However, this is still a huge majority over things like subscription-based music services like Pandora and Spotify, or per-download fees. Such subscription-based services only account for 17.2% of the total revenue brought in from mobile music, while per-download fees only amount to 14.1% of total mobile music revenues. Since advertising with mobile music already brings in the majority of mobile music revenue, it may prove to be something that is worth looking into sometime soon.
Even by 2014, eMarketer has predicted that mobile music ad revenue will account for 82.2% of all mobile music revenue, which is already significantly higher than the 69% of this year. However, it is not mobile music that will lead the way in mobile content revenues by 2016. As of right now, the leading generators of content revenue are games, accounting for 43% of US mobile content revenue. Games’ leading the way in content revenue is a trend that will continue through 2016, according to eMarketer.
This will still leave music as the smallest source of mobile content revenues, compared with video and games, though its share in 2015 will be 7 percentage points greater than this year. Gaming commands a plurality of revenues, at 43% of the total in 2012 and hovering around that amount through the end of the forecast period, while video revenues will shrink from more than half of revenues in 2010 to less than a third by 2016. This year, revenues from mobile games will reach $1.08 billion, compared with $1 billion from video.
While mobile music is expected to reach$ 1.68 billion in revenue by the year 2016, gaming is already expected to reach $1.08 billion by this year. When considering the growth of both of these types of content is expected to be enormous, gaming will far out-do music in 2016, just as it has this year.
Still though, the improvement of mobile music advertising is somewhat exciting. Even though it is not the top content revenue generator, it is still seeing growth, and growth is always good. Content marketing is a very strategic process, and with a third eligible candidate for successful results, things could potentially get a bit more interesting for marketers that are interested in it.
