The Access Model for Music and the Effect of Modification, Trial, and Sharing Usage Rights on Streaming Adoption and Piracy

The access economy business model has been applied to a wide range of digital goods and services such as software, movies, music, and books. The digital platforms that manage transactions between buyers and sellers enable product rights owners to define product usage rights with a great deal of precision. In this paper, music product usage rights for digital consumption and platform attributes of music streaming systems are discussed and a model for digital music streaming system adoption and digital piracy is presented. The results of a quasi-experiment suggest that the perceived freedom to tryout, modify, and share digital music products contribute to both perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment of a product format and the music streaming system. In turn, perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment lead to the intention to adopt a music streaming system. The perceived usefulness of a music streaming system is associated with a reduction of pirating intention.