A survey of 2000 internet users in the UK from GfK NOP has found that iTunes still remains by far the most popular music service, but that new entrant Spotify is shooting rapidly up the charts, despite having only just celebrated its 1st birthday.

The survey asked participants which music services they used, and 11% said Spotify. That puts it in fourth place behind Real Player (13%), Amazon (24%) and iTunes sitting at the top with 50% approval rating. Spotify sits ahead of the slightly older Last.fm (7%), MP3.com (5%) and Napster (4%). 60% of users stream music direct from the Web.

In the navigation arena, Google Maps dominates with 72% of those surveyed saying they used it. The AA came in second place with 40% and Multimap was third with 35%. Behind that came Mapquest (7%), MSN Maps (4%), Yahoo Maps (4%) and Streetmap (3%).

When it comes to social networking, new boy Twitter draws for second place with MySpace - but both only have 4% of people who use them as their main social network. Bebo is even lower with 2%, but Facebook romps home with over 74% of users picking it as their favourite.

IM is similarly dominated by one provider - Windows Live Messenger. 50% picked it as their main provider, with 16% going for Facebook chat, Yahoo IM coming in third with 8%, Skype at 6%, AIM at 5% and Google Talk coming in at just 2%.

Webmail is closer - 33% opt for Hotmail, but Yahoo Mail was chosen by 14%, 10% picked their own ISP's service, and only 6% have "Gone Google" and picked up a Gmail account. Interestingly, a further 6% said they used email provided by a social network - is this MySpace mail?

Lastly, Skype wins out when it comes to VoIP - 60% of respondents picked it as their favourite online voice-calling app. Google Talk was second with 13%, and VoIP.com and Gizmo came in third with 3% each.

Of course, while the best provider is winning the day in some categories, others are dominated by bloated former giants commanding the attention of people who are too lazy to make a change. Which would you pick as your favourite in each category? Let us know in the comments below.

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Tags: Software Online Websites Music IM Mapping Software Social Networks Email iTunes Spotify MySpace Twitter Facebook Amazon Lastfm Gmail Hotmail Skype Yahoo Microsoft Google Statistics

iTunes still most popular music service by far originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:41:43 +0000

Not content with crashing down hard on the satnav industry yesterday, today Google put the willies up the music industry too with the launch of a Google music search feature. Just before you go diving off to try it, it's only available in the US at the moment, but so far it's not that extensive anyway. Currently, you can enter a song, a band, a lyric or anything that pertains to music and the engine will come up with a section of music results at the top as it might do with images or videos. The links include streamed previews, music discovery services and, indirectly, mp3 sales too. So, in its current form and even looking to the future, just whose toes are getting trodden and which sites and services will manage to come out okay?
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imeem

As one of the music discovery services that Google promotes in the music links, imeem should receive a boost when the service goes global. It's already a popular site but being thrust to the top of the rankings will certainly do it the power of good. There's always new users waiting to be signed up. Even this development from Google is a long way off the kind of niche that imeem occupies, so the company should be pretty pleased about it all.
Verdict - Winner

iTunes

Plenty of music purchases start with an internet search to find out what an artist, album or song is called and if there's a link to buy the track straight away, this being the case it could take some business away fro Apple. At the moment, the links to buy are only there on certain tracks and only once the user has already clicked through to one of Google's partner sites. The other issue is that the Google offering could develop into a streaming service and prove a threat to iTunes on that front. Whatever it means, it's not good news for Apple but you'd think that Jobs Inc has something clever up their sleeves what with the wind of change in the music industry anyway. Apple ditched DRM when it realised it had to and doubtless the company will look to streaming or another change in model soon anyway.
Verdict - Short term loser

Pandora

As one of Google's partners for this venture it's generally quids in for Pandora. A link straight to the top of the rankings without having to battle the SEO gods saves a lot of time, stress and effort and should win the service even more users than it already has. Opening out beyond the US would probably do them more favours though.
Verdict - Winner

MySpace

The vintage social network already does surprisingly well out of Google's ventures with the odd music video popping up far higher in search results than the site's waning popularity would suggest. Hard to tell whether the service is on an endless slope to destruction or if it'll reach an eventual plateau of loyal users, but the music feature from Google will certainly provide a brief stay of execution. In the long run though, it could just keep actual traffic away from the MySpace site with just its content being streamed to Google's pages. No ad impressions for them there.
Verdict - Short term winner

iLike

On the other hand, MySpace's recent acquisition of the ex-Facebook app iLike could prove to help a whole lot more. Firstly, the site has a far more modern offering than its buyer, and more importantly, it's one of the click throughs for Google where you can buy the track you've just searched for. Nice business unless, of course, Google decides to sell the tracks itself.?
Verdict - Winner

Spotify

No real problems at present. Yes, there's a degree of streaming you can do with the Google music feature but it doesn't compare to the entire Spotify platform and its tidal wave of good will support. If Google really wanted to, there's no doubt the engineers could build themselves an equally impressive model with even further reach. Daniel Ek won't be losing any sleep over this one but it might sit at the back of the Spotify supremos mind
Verdict - Long term niggle

Record shops

The damage was done here a long time ago. As Pocket-lint's resident expert on digital music put only too succinctly, "went into Fopp the other day. Made a mental note to check out a few things on Spotify. Bought nothing". Most high street retailers will be too busy looking across at the empty Zavi stores to have noticed what Google has just announced.
Verdict - Already lost

Wikipedia

Wikipedia has done a fantastic job of romping its way up the searching rankings for absolutely everything, including music. Having Google plonk its music feature at the top of the list along with links to the companies partners with all the information you could possibly want on a band or a song is something of a party pooper. Naturally, this isn't Wikipedia's sole business but what happens when Google has a feature of its own for just about everything?
Verdict - Loser

Amazon mp3

Like Wikipedia, Amazon has enjoyed top billing on the Google rankings and having its mp3 downloads service trumped by something of Google's very own is both frustrating and simply insurmountable. As it stands, it's an irritant, but if Google takes the time to put a Buy Now button next to their results that go straight to Google check, then there's a problem. Fortunately, mp3 sales aren't the core of Amazon's business, the company will still do fine with them all the same through deferred sales within their own network and as much consumer trust as any e-tailer can have.
Verdict - Loser

YouTube

Bit of a strange one seeing as it belongs to Google anyway but the music results will not only cannibalise some of YouTube's traffic but also divert it elsewhere too. Listening to tracks on the world's favourite video service is big business for the Tube and if you can do that straight from search, then they could lose out quite a lot. Again, it's not the only thing on YouTube but what with the public tiring somewhat of sneezing pandas, it's probably a bigger issue than you'd think.
Verdict - Loser

Last.fm

Like Pandora, it's the excellent nature of Last.fm's music recommendation system that sets it above all the rest and, at present, that's not something that Google has on the roadmap. Naturally, if the search giant wanted to, it could put the resources into making something similar. What it does have to its advantage is the enormous database on the subject but it doesn't seem like a logical step for the company. What is a slight concern for Last.fm is that Pandora has been chosen as a partner, but, seeing as that service only works in the US, it's not such a problem at the moment.
Verdict - No bother

Related links:

• Feature - 29th August 2012: the date Google becomes "aware"
• News - VIDEO: Google demos Music Search
• Feature - Six serious reasons why Google Maps Navigation is pure win...

Tags: Software Online Google Search engines MySpace Pandora iTunes Amazon MP3 Wikipedia imeem iLike

Who'll be the casualties of Google Music? originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:32:59 +0000

Google has added music search to its growing search offering as it attempts to help people find what they are looking for quicker.

"Every day we get millions of search queries about music. You want to know more about your favorite artists, find that new album or iconic song or figure out the name of that tune stuck in your head", says Google on its official blog.

Google searchers looking for a particular song, artist, or album can now do so by typing that information into the search box.

Results are then produced to match the query, if available, and users will be offered a preview of the song thanks to a deal with MySpace.

Taking the search one step further Google has said that it will also allow forgetful users to punch in a chorus or words from the song as well.

If that wasn't enough? Google has said that it has teamed up with Pandora, imeem and Rhapsody to include links to their sites where you can discover music related to your queries as well.

So far there is no word as to whether Google will implement a buy button via its Google Checkout service offering users a "buy at search" offering.

Google has promised the new feature to its US based searchers in the next couple of days. No word on when the service will get global support.

We will keep you posted.

UPDATE: The service is live in the US at google.com/music. No sign of it in the UK.

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Tags: Software Online Google Search engines MySpace Pandora

Google adds music search; foretells the death of another industry originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 29 Oct 2009 02:18:25 +0000

MySpace has announced what it says is "the next phase" of its music offering with a wave of new products and tools now available to artists and fans.

As well as allowing users to buy music on iTunes in addition to Amazon MP3, the global rollout of a new "MySpace Music Video" experience has begun, while the "MySpace Artist Dashboard" - a free data and analytics tool for artists - has hit beta.

MySpace Music Videos launches with the boast of being one of the most comprehensive online collections of music videos available anywhere.

The MySpace Artist Dashboard offers detailed analytics about artist's content within the MySpace community offering trending data and info on song plays, profile views, friend count, and profile visitors.

Tags: Software Online Websites MySpace Social networking Audio Video on demand iTunes Amazon MP3

MySpace hits next phase of music offering originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:38:35 +0100