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TEMPO: Keeping Pace with Digital Music Behavior

We've all experienced the impact of digital music around the world. And while the corporate race to redefine the music marketplace continues, is anyone listening to the listeners?

There is no doubt that the arrival of digitally distributed music has fundamentally changed the way consumers discover, listen to, and purchase music. In the past, information gleaned from sales data and analyst reports was sufficient in gaining insights into emerging market trends. But in this rapidly developing environment, strategic business decisions need to be based on empirical evidence – actual numbers that measure and track how things are unfolding.

TEMPO: Keeping Pace with Digital Music Behavior, is the preeminent digital music market report based on quantitative primary data collection – real consumers offering real information on their music listening, purchase and entertainment behaviors. It is a biannual research program that reports an in-depth assessment of the global consumer appetite for digital music, as well as the ripple effect this has on other distribution and entertainment channels.

The data TEMPO provides transform online music distribution from hyped-up phenomenon into measurable market trends, with a keen view into the attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs of music listeners around the world. This statistically reliable information allows strategic decision-makers to focus on the facts, and effectively position their business model for the future.

TEMPO 2009

Since its initial inception in 2000, TEMPO has been helping many different companies – from entertainment media firms to communications device manufacturers – glean important insights on:

• Target markets for new and existing business models within the music entertainment industry
• Where potential product development opportunities exist within the industry
• Encroaching threats to existing delivery platforms and distribution channels
• Ideas to develop e-commerce and other music distribution strategies
• What types of partnerships could be leveraged within the consolidating market
• Incremental revenue streams as well as potential areas of cannibalization
• Impact of unauthorized distribution, the attitudes driving it and how to best address the issue

TEMPO is an ongoing research program that allows companies to join in when it is right for them. Some companies prefer to subscribe at the beginning, when the data is freshest, so they can have a leg up on their competitors. Others choose to buy later, so they can have the older contextual data for tracking, at a reduced cost. For 2009, the comprehensive annual subscription includes the entire year's data set, featuring two biannual in-depth behavioral deep-dive waves. Subscriber deliverables include complete data tabulations, as well as full roll-up presentation style reports following fieldwork.

Subscribers receive:

• Biannual reports tracking prevalence and in-depth behaviors and usage
• Three additional content focused reports, covering topics such as mobile music, the digital music brandscape and the music discovery and purchase process
• Biannual data tables
• Optional presentations

Methodology

TEMPO features biannual tracking among a representative online sample of Americans ages 12 and older. This provides a context from which to understand the advancing digital music transition, as well as insights on the motivations and potential behind this migration.