Mobile music market keeps growing in Russia

The growth of the mobile market coincided with an increase in income of the world's music industry. Source: PhotoXPress

According to a study conducted by J’son&Partners Consulting, the Russian mobile music services market grew by 119 percent, reaching nearly $1.8 million in 2012.

Forecasts predict that this figure may grow eight-fold and surpass the mark of $14 million during the next three years. The aggregate world market volume in this segment is $537 million.

The leaders in consumption of music content on mobile devices are still the United States and developed European countries. Apple’s iTunes Store enjoys the greatest popularity, both globally and in Russia.

The other popular service in Russia is Yandex.Music, owned by Russia's largest Internet search engine.

The most common way of monetizing content is through the sale of music inside applications. This figure increased almost three-fold globally, while, in Russia, it increased by only one-third.

Now the Russian market is dominated by paid applications that account for 55 percent of sales. However, by 2016, this figure will be reduced significantly.

The growth of the mobile market coincided with an increase in income of the world's music industry. This figure had risen by 0.3 percent, reaching $16.5 billion for the first time in 13 years. Thus, mobile music services account for only 3 percent of sales.

According to the market research company AC&M-Consulting, music in the digital format was legally purchased to the tune of 14.99 billion rubles in Russia in 2012.

Of this amount, 11.8 billion rubles were brought in by music for mobile subscribers, installed as replacements for ringtones (the Ring Back Tone service, RBT), about 2.6 billion rubles were brought in by the sale of music via other mobile channels (ringtones, mp3), and only 593 million rubles were brought in by Internet music services (including mobile versions).

The sales leaders are: iTunes (30–35 percent of online music market), Yandex.Music and Trava.ru (15 percent for the two combined).

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