Music Streaming More than Downloads, YouTube Tops Online Music Service

According to a new study about online music consumption, more people stream music than download music with payment or for free. The study called 'The Hyper-Fragmented World of Music' was taken by Nielsen from 25,000 people across 53 markets during the end of last year. As a result of this, YouTube beats iTunes and becomes the largest online music service provider.

This is really good news for YouTube and 'cloud' service such as Amazon cloud music player. The picture below shows the percentage of different music activities that people take part in.

From the above illustration, we could find that nearly 60% of people polled watched music videos on computer, and less than 50% participants admitted to downloaded a song from the Internet without paying for it. Only 17% of respondents have paid to download a music track to their computers in the past three months. Most Internet users' just watch online music video for their main music consumption. So music video portal YouTube and VEVO.com are the biggest winners. iTunes Store fails to attract most consumers' attention but remains labels' biggest single recorded-music payout partner.