The latest addition to the digital music subscription club is rara.com – an on-demand service that launched in the U.S. among other locations at the end of 2011.  With broad-appeal playlists and over 10 million tracks and licensing deals at all major labels, Billboard says rara.com is looking to convert “digital virgins” by offering a discounted membership that starts at an intro price of $.99 a month for PC streaming, and tops out at $9.99 a month for PC and mobile streaming after the introductory offer expires.

Rara.com’s entre on the digital music scene is well timed as a new report from IFPI shows that licensed digital music services grew at an unprecedented rate in 2011.  The Digital Music Report 2011 shows that services like rara, Spotify and iTunes are now open in 58 countries, up from 23 just a year ago. Digital sales represented 32 percent of industry revenues globally, while in the U.S. digital sales surpassed physical sales.

The report also highlights that despite this progress, piracy still poses a threat to a sustainable digital market, as one in four international users regularly access unlicensed services.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 9th, 2012 at 3:58 pm by Amanda Reynolds and is filed under In Syn©. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.