Music sites need to shape up

Sites that offer music downloads need to smarten up their act if they are to survive in the future.

That's according to an assessment made by analysts at Keynote UK, who monitored several download services including iTunes and Napster in the second quarter of 2007.

Keynote reckons that online music customers are increasingly demanding and competition in the market means sites will only succeed if they keep punters happy by providing a service that is always available and reacts quickly to input.

In the three months up until the end of June, Virgin Digital offered the fastest average page loading time at 0.755 seconds, whereas Napster was online for the most time with 99.95 per cent availability.

However, Napster's pages took longest to load at 4.225 seconds on average and Wippit was the only available for 94.38 per cent of the time in the last three months.

"For music download sites to survive and prosper in the future, they'll need to smarten up their act and deliver a new level of customer experience.

"This means not only conducting independent performance monitoring on a regular basis, but also conducting regular research on the changing motivations, attitudes and behaviour of the online music buyer," said Martin Stern, head of Keynote UK.

The services assessed were iTunes, Napster, HMV Digital, Virgin Digital, Wippit, Tesco Downloads and The Ministry of Sound.

www.keynote.com

More news via RSS Post item to Del.icio.us Post item to Digg.com