Among the many uses that can be made of a tablet, listening to music is one of the most important. For music lovers with an iPad, their tablet is at once a radio, a portable hi-fi system, to listen to their personal disco or to make discoveries. Apps have become an essential key to accessing music.
Listening to music is one of the main digital leisure activities of the French.
More than a quarter of them have at least one contact with music on an average day, an increase of 1 point in a year, according to the Médiamétrie's Média in Life study.
While the number of tablets in households is growing at a fast pace - it doubled between the first quarter of 2012 and 2013, to reach 18 % households (5.1 million tablets)1 - how are they using this new object for music?
The Music On Tab study, carried out in March-April 2013 by Médiamétrie using its Tablet Panel, with a sample of 521 "iPaders" aged 15 and over who listen to music every day or almost every day on different media (radio, music videos, CDs, MP3s, Internet, etc.) sheds light on the musical behaviour of these "early-adopters", indicators of the trend in the way the tablet is changing the way people listen to music.
The iPad owner prefers pop and variety
The profile of iPad owners who regularly listen to music does not seem to differ much from that of tablet users: rather male, aged 35-49, CSP+. These characteristics are probably linked to its high price. As a result, their musical tastes reflect those of their age group: pop rock and French variety are at the top of the list, far ahead of "younger" genres such as rap, soul and electro.
The iPad devices surveyed are multi-equipped. The majority of them have access to at least
3 screens (tablet, mobile phone, computer), and have for many other equipment dedicated to listening to music: a hi-fi system in half of the cases, a multimedia player for nearly 40 %, a dock for their tablet (37 %). Often, compatibility obliges, they are faithful to the Apple brand for this equipment.
Music = relaxation
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A very large majority of these regular listeners (90 %) consider music as a means of relaxation and escape, an indispensable part of their daily life (72 %), an accompaniment that is even more necessary when travelling on public transport (63 %) or in the car (62 %), than to have fun with friends (55 %).
And they have adopted the iPad as their listening device: three-quarters of iPad owners surveyed have used it to listen to music in the past month. Radio is the number one way to listen to music on iPad
86 % of iPad-equipped people listen to the radio and for almost half (49 %) of the respondents, this is where they listen to music most often.
This use of the radio is especially marked among the over 50s (59 %) and among fans of Rap, Soul, R&B.
It's no wonder music stations are at the top of the Top 10 favorite stations for iPad users...
Listening to music on a CD is preferred by only 10 % of iPad devices. On the other hand, listening to a file in digital format (downloading, streaming...) is the most common practice of 411 % of the "iPaders" questioned, particularly among electro enthusiasts.
With the iPad, music all over the house
Outside the home, personal music players and mobile phones are used more often (by 73 and 62 % of respondents respectively) than the iPad (33%) to listen to music.
On the other hand, 94% of those who have listened to music on iPad in the last month listened to it at home.
Their tablet has become, along with the hi-fi system, the privileged support for listening at home. Dining room/living room, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen: the portability of the iPad makes it the ideal support to listen to your music as you move around in any room. In half of the cases, it is connected to speakers or placed on a docking station to amplify the sound. The hi-fi system is used only in the main room.
Essential music applications
It is through an application that 90 % of iPad owners access music, much more than by connecting to a site (39 %). These are mainly video platform applications (59 %), streaming on-demand applications (50 %) and radio station applications.
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But 42 % of the respondents access their personal discotheque, imported from a computer, via the application pre-installed on the iPad, iTunes. This is the preferred method of access cited by 20 % of respondents, much more than access to a discotheque stored in the "cloud" (iCloud/iTunes match) used by more than a third of iPad music listeners, but preferred by only 12 % of them. The notion of ownership and personal storage of the music file seems to retain value in the eyes of listeners.
iTunes, Youtube, Deezer: third tier of winning applications
Spontaneously, when asked about the Music application they know, iPad owners first cite Deezer (on-demand streaming), then iTunes, Apple's pre-installed application for importing and buying tracks, and finally YouTube (video, including music videos).
In assisted notoriety (from a list of names), iTunes, YouTube, Deezer, Shazam are the best known. They are also the most used and preferred.
Find your music easily, find it everywhere
The prescribing role of the application store (App Store) is decisive in the downloading of an application for 48 % of the respondents. Faced with a huge offer - several thousand in the music category - 22 % refer to the ranking of the most popular applications to make their choice.
The richness of the range of titles on offer, the ease of use and above all the ease of searching for titles are the first qualities that respondents expect from a music application.
But they would also like to be able to find their playlists on all media (desired by more than 90 % of the respondents), access the lyrics of the songs, and to a lesser extent share them with friends.
In a radio station application, users want to be able to find the titles that are playing, keep them and listen to them again whenever they want.
Nearly 20 % of iPaders listening to music on their tablet are subscribed to a pay service via a platform, mainly Deezer and Spotify. This is a minority but a high proportion compared to the behaviour of the entire connected population. The rather high age and average income of the iPad owner probably favours subscription.
Young people share the music
Sharing music via social networks, mainly Facebook, is used by a third of music listeners on iPad. Mainly 15-24 year olds.
Ease of sharing is not the first motivation for users to access an application directly via a social network: they first try to avoid filling out a form to create their account in the music application.
Conversely, a third of respondents refuse to use this feature because they do not want their various online accounts to be linked or they do not wish to share content. These attitudes are certainly not limited to the music field alone.
Exchanges with his "friends" are not the only way to make musical discoveries. Nearly a third of iPad owners use the recommendations offered by an application to discover new artists and titles.
Source: Médiamétrie/Isabelle Repiton - Music On Tab - March-April 2013 - Copyright Médiamétrie
