A Study of Online Digital Music Evaluation

The understanding of digital music consumer behavior and determinants of online digital music evaluation helps music retailers implement online digital music marketing strategies. In this study, the authors investigate the profiles of music consumers on the Internet and explore how consumers use product sampling and customer reviews for online music evaluation. The authors find most people use free radio as their main music source, piracy and digital music remains a problem. The authors also find consumers still depend on traditional word of mouth for their music evaluation. This study shows that many consumers are more likely to trust online sampling than online reviews, and online sampling plays a more important role than online reviews in their music evaluation. The authors also investigate post-sampling results including the music evaluation, willingness to pay (WTP), free rider, enjoyable sampling process, perceived usefulness of online sampling, knowing the true music value, further reading online reviews, using other music evaluation channels, and writing customer reviews after sampling. The authors also conduct coefficient correlation analysis for post-sampling results and provide managerial interpretations.