Australian consumer access to digital media content

We have just launched a new project to study changes in Australian digital media markets.

We are developing the infrastructure to track films, television series, music, and apps in different markets over time. This data will help us know whether Australians still suffer from an ‘Australia tax’ where we pay more, wait longer, and have less choice than consumers in other countries.

Most importantly, we will be able to explore how digital media markets are changing over time. This data will help us understand how markets are co-evolving with changes to media consumption. With this new infrastructure, we can start to ask many more interesting questions about how cultural production and distribution is changing, how copyright laws are working, and how well digital markets are operating.

The project is funded by the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN), Australia’s peak body for consumer representation in communications.

This project assesses the relative availability of digital media content to Australian consumers, focusing on download and streaming services. The most popular content will be sampled across film and television, music, computer games, and mobile apps, and availability evaluated across three criteria: pricing, timeliness, and diversity of delivery channel options (including quality and format choices). This data will be used to generate an ongoing comparison between the Australian and US media markets. A detailed report and a consumer-focused website will be published that visualises and explains the data on content availability, helping Australian consumers to make informed choices about digital media content.