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Average iTunes user never listens to 81% of music library

Summary: The online music lockers from Amazon and Google have generated excitement, but new data from Music WithMe shows iTunes users only play a fraction of the music they actually own.

Jason Hiner

By for Between the Lines |

Web users have been frantically uploading their music libraries in recent months with the launches ofAmazon Cloud Player and Google Music Beta. Both services are storage lockers where users can upload their music files and then play them via a Web browser across multiple computers or devices, or with an Android app.

However, the wisdom of that approach is being called into question by new data released by Music WithMe, which takes a competing approach to managing a music library on a mobile device. Based on Music WithMe's experience over the past three years in wirelessly syncing iTunes with BlackBerry and Android devices, it did some data crunching on its anonymous user data and determined that the average iTunes user only plays 19% of the music in her library.

That means most users never listen to over 80% of the music in their libraries. Sounds like an awful waste of space in the Google and Amazon clouds.

Music WithMe Co-CEO Jeff Fedor said, "We've been fortunate enough to learn from our users for the past three years about what they want and more importantly how they actually discover, share and sync music. User feedback and data, like the 19% statistic, really drive home how much need there is for good music discovery tools. The search feature that we just launched is one of those tools. It's one way for people to discover music across shared music, their own music, Amazon, iTunes and even YouTube."

Music WithMe lets you sync playlists, artists, and albums over-the-air (Wi-Fi or cellular) from your iTunes library (using a helper app for Mac or Windows) to your Android device. But, the focus isn't on syncing your whole library, just the stuff you want to play right now. The focus is also on social media and social music discovery, letting you easily tweet the song you're playing and listen to the popular songs other users are playing at the moment.

Expect this concept of uploading your music files versus using Web and social music services to heat up on Monday at Apple WWDC 2011, since Apple is expected to launch its streaming music service as an alternative (or compliment) to traditional iTunes.

Also read

This was originally published on TechRepublic.

Topics: Mobility, Apple, Hardware

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23 comments
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  • RE: Average iTunes user never listens to 81% of music library

    Of course, music has become a commodity. As it becomes so cheap it loses value and it's mostly just bloody awful. Hardly anyone sits and actually enjoys music anymore. It has become little more than background noise.
    pdskep
    Reply Vote

    • RE: Average iTunes user never listens to 81% of music library

      @pdskep

      Interesting statement. I think there's some truth to that.
      josh92
      Reply Vote

    • 10 out of 12 tracks on an average album....

      @pdskep
      ... are bulk filler material with no redeaming value. Yep, this sounds about right. This is why music (and cable) companies are so against "ala carte" purchases of what is good.
      kd5auq
      Reply Vote

      • RE: Average iTunes user never listens to 81% of music library

        @kd5auq Only for crappy bands. If an album doesn't have more than 4-5 songs I'm interested in I won't bother. I always buy the entire album.
        pdskep
        Reply Vote

  • RE: Average iTunes user never listens to 81% of music library

    "most users never listen to over 80% of the music in their libraries"...

    Music WithMe didn't ask everyone when they were gathering statistics. I typically put my iPod on Shuffle, and do the same when listening directly in iTunes.
    smtp4me@...
    Reply Vote

    • RE: Average iTunes user never listens to 81% of music library

      @smtp4me@... <br><br>Maybe you should re-read the first word ... "most", not "all".<br><br>Also, they didn't "ask" anyone, they amalgamated data from all users usage of their system.<br><br>And, I do exactly the same, put my music on shuffle, but even with doing that for over two years now, there is still over 50% of my library that has not been touched (I have converted my entire CD collection to MP3, and have over 9,000 songs).<br><br>Ludo
      Ludovit
      Reply Vote

  • RE: Average iTunes user never listens to 81% of music library

    I believe this. Thinking about how large my music collection is, I could never listen to it all. I think I have 15 gigs of music just from The Kinks and Peter Gabriel alone. It would take me days to get through just those 2 artists lol.
    Bates_
    Reply Vote

    • OMG

      If you really have 15G of Kinks songs, you are a threat to humanity. Have you considered what would happen if space aliens sucked up your music library and made it come blasting out of every speaker and earphone on Earth?
      Robert Hahn
      Reply Vote

      • RE: Average iTunes user never listens to 81% of music library

        @Robert Hahn Dude it could be far worse... he could have 15GB of Billy Ray Cyrus and Hanna Montana songs that could theoretically be blasted from every speaker on earth...

        Besides what's wrong with The Kinks?
        athynz
        Reply Vote

  • RE: Average iTunes user never listens to 81% of music library

    I don't think things have changed much from the days of vinyl. I never listened to "all" of my albums either.
    CitizenX
    Reply Vote

  • RE: Average iTunes user never listens to 81% of music library

    More wasted money on music padding the wallets of the music industry and Apple.
    mstrsfty
    Reply Vote

    • RE: Average iTunes user never listens to 81% of music library

      @mstrsfty Are you really that pathetic in your hatred for Apple that you somehow twisted this into padding Apple's wallet? Man, you really need to get a life, meds or both.
      non-biased
      Reply Vote

  • RE: Average iTunes user never listens to 81% of music library

    These folks uploading their music and deleting the files from their hard drive are going to be in for a rude awakening when storage rates appear and they find they cannot re-download them.
    Bodazapha
    Reply Vote

    • RE: Average iTunes user never listens to 81% of music library

      @Bodazapha ... Yeah, what idiot allows any outside party to hold the ONLY copy of anything? Stupid, stupid, stupid, and goes against ALL backup advice anywhere! DVDs and external drives are all logical places to back up music to. ANY musc you can play, you can record right on your own computer and then back it up.
      tom@...
      Reply Vote

  • RE: Average iTunes user never listens to 81% of music library

    Part of the problem is the shuffle feature on iTunes is horrible. I don?t know about Apple?s definition of random but iTunes consistently replays the same songs over and over.
    Mark C_
    Reply Vote

    • RE: Average iTunes user never listens to 81% of music library

      @Mark C_ Ditto!

      What I noticed after I beefed up my music library on an iThingie was that by using shuffle I effectively wound up with a playlist that excluded the bulk of the content. Some tunes would get repeated frequently, others only once in a blue moon -- but I'd have to wait weeks or even months to hear even half of the tracks I'd purchased.

      On my previous non-Apple music player, "shuffle" meant that the entire library was scrambled -- and nothing would replay until everything had played once already.

      I'm sure there are middle-ground ways to do a shuffle algorithm, but I preferred the non-Apple one.
      The One True Fnerd
      Reply Vote

    • Not Just iTunes

      @Mark C_
      I have the same experience on other mp3 players. My guess is that random is more psuedorandom in design. I have not seen the algorythm used to do random, for all I know is that it is using a simple random generated number that gets reduced to an integer and either added or subtracted from the current selection number.

      I notice that the random setting tends to act like the top 40 radio stations. It keeps picking the same songs over and over with a few less played songs getting into the mix.
      sboverie
      Reply Vote

      • RE: Average iTunes user never listens to 81% of music library

        @sboverie@... Depending on the app you use, some of them rate the "ratings" you gave songs differently and plays your more popular more than the others. It's common. Either don't rate them or give them all the same rating.
        tom@...
        Reply Vote

    • RE: Average iTunes user never listens to 81% of music library

      @Mark C_ ... So grab Audacity, re-record it all, and use a player that has true random shuffling.
      tom@...
      Reply Vote

  • RE: Average iTunes user never listens to 81% of music library

    It amazes me that this is news to anyone. All of us old-schoolers and music professionals (who actually have a use for large music libraries in hard media form) are sitting on thousands of CD's that we hardly ever listen to. I have only about one half of a percent of my music collection digitized to my computers, and only about a tenth of that on my portable players. Even those professionals own CD's they will never listen to again. Whoever thought that would not be the case in the cloud was really not paying attention.
    always-a-geek
    Reply Vote
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