Teenager’s music consumption behaviour and the technology of streaming services

Abstract

The growth of music streaming can best be understood by knowing that over one billion people worldwide use YouTube with 80 percent of YouTube’s billions of views per day coming from outside of the U.S. Digital music revenues, previously driven by purchases (downloads), now mostly derive from access-based consumption (streams) which in 2015 reached US$ 2.9 billion in revenue from approximately 20 streaming service providers. Thailand’s smartphone enabled youthful consumers are in the top of most global statistics and lead many regional internet/digital related categories. Combined however with this technological savvy, the internet and the smartphone contribute to the dark side of music piracy which some experts’ state is responsible for a 71 percent drop since 1999 in music revenue in the US alone. The research therefore aims to study the factors that affect Thai teenager music streaming services use through a discovery process by use of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). Sweden’s streaming music service Spotify in the first half of 2016 became the global leader in music streaming services. Spotify was stated at its inception to be a vehicle to thwart music piracy and offer a legitimate platform for music distribution. It is with this vision this study is undertaken to determine how a new generation of Thai teenagers will legally embrace the newest generation of technological innovation, music streaming services, thus saving an industry which many have noted is in a global death spiral.