Napster picked up an award for the Most Popular Overseas Digital Downloads Site at the prestigious Australian Online Music Awards, known to the industry as the ONYA!s. It shrugged off competition from MP3.com and Audiogalaxy for the honour.
Judging by the results, Napster is just as popular as ever in Australia, regardless of media commentary about how its planned outages, decreased libraries and policed activity would reduce its fan-base.
The local equivalent of this award went to MP3.com.au--up against tough competition from ChaosMusic, Download Music and Soundbuzz.
The awards, sponsored by Microsoft Windows Media Player and Ozemail Internet, were hosted at Sydney live-music venue, the Basement. They are intended to "honour excellence and innovation in the dissemination of music and music information on the Internet", according to the official site.
More than 60,000 unique visitors from over 60 countries hit the site prior to the award ceremony in order to view the nominations and/or lodge their votes.
Digital Downloads on an upward spiral
This year's awards saw the introduction of a digital downloads site category, recognising the emergence of digital downloads as a viable method of sourcing and storing music.
According to Phil Tripp, CEO of IMMEDIA!, an ONYA business partner, it was necessary to introduce this category to reflect the changes in the market and the way consumers utilise online music media.
He also believes the industry will see a huge takeup of digital downloads within the next ten years.
"An analyst's report in the US quoted that by 2010, digitally downloaded music would be worth 10 percent of the [consumer digital music] market."
Another recent industry event supports this prediction. At the 5th annual National Entertainment Industry Conference, a panel of experts, including representatives from ChaosMusic, Wired Records, Shock Music Group, Downloadmusic.com and APRA, revealed predictions that digital downloads would account for approximately 20-25 percent of the market by 2005, in Australia.
According to the managing director of Soundbuzz, Andrew Hoppe, "as more people access the Internet through mobiles, (creating portability), this will lead to exponential growth in the take-up of digital dowenloads".
Retailers should not be alarmed just yet though, says Phil Tripp.
"Even up to 2010, hard carriers will still be the predominant way of receiving music in the home.
"CD retailers and etailers will not have to die, they'll just have to adapt to changing markets".
