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The Cost of Freemium

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The Cost of Freemium The Cost of Freemium Empirical Research on the Freemium Music Streaming Services and their Impact on the Music Industry Student Name: Rebecca B Hamel Student Number: 428045 Supervisor: Prof. Sandra Van Ginhoven Master in Cultural Economics and Entrepreneurship School of History, Culture and Communication Erasmus University Rotterdam May 23, 2017 Rotterdam, Netherlands Word Count: 22,214 Acknowledgments Foremost, I would like to thank my thesis supervisor, Professor Sandra van Ginhoven, for all her guidance, encouragement and most importantly, patience. Her insights and expertise added substantially to this work. I also want to thank my parents and older brother, for their continuous love and support. I am thankful they were always there to give me the push I needed during my moments of self doubt. 3 Hamel 428045 Abstract Music streaming services (MSSs) are a relative new comer to the online digital music market. As of yet, there has been much apprehension from key stakeholders within the music industry, towards the use of the freemium pricing model by many of the MSS platforms. This research aims to uncover the impact of freemium MSSs within the music industry via an empirical study into the potential incomes of MSSs and revenue levels. Consumers valuation of freemium MSSs were elicited through contingent valuation methods, and a questionnaire was used to measure respondent’s willingness to pay (WTP) for a premium service tier, and willingness to listen (WTL) to adverts for a free service tier. Results showed that the optimum price level for premium streaming services is around 7$ per month, while the optimum level of advertisements were around 3 minutes per hour for the free service. A review of these results along side complementary sources on the music industry showed that freemium MSS services have a high earning potential for record labels and right holders, discourages piracy, and are a valuable tool for artists to promote and earn from their music. All the key stakeholders, record labels, artists, and consumers, stand to benefit from MSSs. This research hopes to clarify some of the misconceptions and controversy surrounding MSS and foster cooperation between them and key stakeholders in order to reverse some of the negative impact of piracy and digitalization within the music industry. Key Words: Music streaming services, music commodification, piracy, digitalization, digital music distribution, copyright 4 Hamel 428045 Table of Contents Table of Contents.......................................................................................................................4 1. Introduction............................................................................................................................6 2. A Concise Overview of the Music Industry’s History...................................................7 2.1 Music as a Commodity and the Establishment of the Music Industry (prior 1970s).... 7 2.2 A Look Back at Recent Technological Changes and their Impact on Music Industry Stakeholders (1970s and Beyond) .................................................................................................15 2.2.1 The Vinyl Era (1960-1980) ............................................................................................................. 15 2.2.2 The Cassette Tape (1980-1995) ..................................................................................................... 17 2.2.3 Compact Discs (1900 - 2005) ......................................................................................................... 19 2.2.4 Audio Coding Formats (MP3) and the Internet (1990 – 2000s) ......................................... 21 2.3 From Downloading to Streaming ...........................................................................................25 3. Literature Review............................................................................................................... 32 3.1 Nature of Research for MSS....................................................................................................32 3.1.1 Copyright in the age of digitalization........................................................................................... 33 3.1.2 Empirical Research on Piracy......................................................................................................... 38 3.1.3 Willingness to Pay .............................................................................................................................. 41 3.1.4 Empirical Research on Price Strategy Design for Digital Music Products ..................... 42 3.1.5 Empirical Research on Freemium Pricing Strategy................................................................. 44 3.2 Research Questions....................................................................................................................46 4. Methodology ........................................................................................................................ 47 4.1 Choice of method........................................................................................................................49 4.2 Sampling and Data Descriptives .............................................................................................50 4.3 Operationalization .....................................................................................................................54 4.3.1 Questionnaire Design......................................................................................................................... 54 4.3.2 Optimization Revenue Models....................................................................................................... 58 5 Results, Discussion and Conclusion................................................................................. 64 5.1. Results..........................................................................................................................................64 5.1.1. Questionnaire Results....................................................................................................................... 65 5.1.2. Results from Complementary Sources ....................................................................................... 76 5.2 Discussion.....................................................................................................................................80 5.2.1. MSSs – a cure or a curse?............................................................................................................... 80 5.2.2. Freemium – is it worth it?............................................................................................................... 87 5.2.3. MSS and the Music industry stakeholders – what’s in it for me? ..................................... 89 5.3. Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................93 5.3.1 Research Limitations & Recommendations............................................................................... 94 Appendices ............................................................................................................................... 96 Appendix A –Abbreviations...........................................................................................................96 Appendix B – Recommendations for Contingent Valuation Method Research .................97 Appendix C – Descriptive Statistics..............................................................................................98 Appendix D – Cross Tabulations ............................................................................................... 100 Appendix E – Statistical Test Results........................................................................................ 104 5 Hamel 428045 Appendix F – Figures.................................................................................................................... 109 Appendix G – Questionnaire....................................................................................................... 114 Appendix H – R-Code................................................................................................................... 118 Appendix I – References .............................................................................................................. 121 6 Hamel 428045 1. Introduction Free + premium = freemium. This portmanteau, coined in 2006 by Jarid Lukin (Schenck, 2011), is the name of a simple and, to some, controversial pricing strategy. The essence of the freemium strategy is that the product (or service) is offered to consumers in multiple tiers, the first of which is a basic version of the product offered for free, while the further product tiers offer higher value at a price or premium. Because of this flexible design, freemium became a popular business model for online stream-able content such as software, movies, and also music. While the freemium pricing strategy may be working well for some products, there has been a lot of contention surrounding the adoption of freemium within music streaming services (MSSs). The main controversy is that selling streamed music using the freemium model is detrimental to the music industry as a whole, since the majority of consumers will flock to the free tier that reputedly does not generate enough profit for the industry to sustain itself at a turbulent and critical point in its history. This research paper
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