Which company is winning the “music streaming wars”? Will that company be able to remain on top or does one of its competitors have a better long-term strategy? And what are the biggest threats and/or issues facing all music streamers today? Limit: 10 responses
Gage Kilborne 1
ReplyDeleteBy far the company that is winning the "music streaming wars" is Spotify music. They currently have the most users and subscribers internationally with 406 million users and 180 million subscribers (Music Ally). Although Spotify is dominating in these numbers, there is still another streaming service that many would not consider it for music streaming, YouTube. YouTube's global head of music, Lyor Cohen, stated that the streaming service has seen an average of 2 billion users per month (Music Ally). This all part of a bigger plan that YouTube has prepared in the longevity of the "music streaming wars".
According to Protocol, "YouTube doesn't want to be the place users discover new songs, only to leave and pay $10 a month to stream them on Spotify."(Pierce). This quote clearly states that YouTube does have a plan in place to try to overstep its competition. The company has already demonstrated the by taking over Google Play Music and is increasing promotion for YouTube Music. From a personal standpoint, my girlfriend listens to her music via YouTube over Spotify while I generally listen through Spotify. The nice feature about YouTube when you pick a song is you can select a playlist that YouTube generates to provide similar songs to the one you selected so you don't have to keep looking through the platform.
Gage Kilborne 2
DeleteOne of the biggest problems that music streamers are currently struggling with is that artists are disagreeing with the platforms. The big disagreement is the amount they are being payed for streams is almost nothing. This didn't become a problem until the pandemic began because artists were able to rely on their concerts and merchandising to make most of their revenue. One artist clearly states the issue by saying, "'If you want to support your favorite artists, streaming is not the way. It's the anti-way.'" (Andrews). This is the main problem many listeners don't understand with streaming platforms is that they pay the artists a fraction of a penny per each minute streamed. This became a big reason during the pandemic because there was no concerts for them to make their money at so they had to rely on streaming services to provide them with financial support during the difficult time.
Overall, the "music streaming wars" have taken off in recent years after Spotify became the big music streaming platform available during the beginning of the pandemic. However, Spotify should start paying close attention to what YouTube is doing behind the scenes for the future of music streaming. I personally wouldn't be surprised if YouTube Music takes over Apple Music in the next 5 years on the streaming service race. The unfortunate thing for streaming services is how poorly they pay the artists who provide them with the content to put on their platform.
Gage Kilborne 3
DeleteAlly, Music. How Many Users Do Spotify, Apple Music and Streaming Services Have?, 2020, https://musically.com/2022/02/03/spotify-apple-how-many-users-big-music-streaming-services/.
Andrews, Travis M. “Spotify Backlash Offers Rare Insight into Reeling Music Industry - and Struggles of Working Musicians.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 23 Feb. 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/02/14/spotify-young-rogan-music-industry/.
Pierce, David. “Inside YouTube's Plan to Win the Music-Streaming Wars.” Protocol, Protocol, 19 Nov. 2020, https://www.protocol.com/youtube-music.
Sarah Lefkowitz
ReplyDeleteThe company that is winning the music streaming wars is Spotify, hands down. This is proven in the statistics. Despite some of the figures being outdated and accumulated, musically.com listed the main streaming services and their amount of listeners. According to Dredge, Tencent has the most amount of users, being 636 million. However, this number is between all three of their music platforms, which exclusively in China. The platform with the truest highest amount of users (ignoring Youtube because that figure isn’t only Youtube Music) is Spotify. “At the end of 2021, Spotify had 406 million monthly active users, including 180 million premium subscribers and 226 million ad-supported listeners” (Dredge). The closest competitor to Spotify, Apple Music, only had 60 million in 2019 according to Dredge. Even though this is an old number, it is still true that Spotify has more users than Apple Music.
I think Spotify will stay on top of the streaming wars and I think the biggest thing they have against Apple Music and the other competitors are their algorithms. Speaking out of personal experience, the personalized playlists made by Spotify are my absolute favorite part of the app. I am absolutely obsessed with all of them, especially the On Repeat, and artist mixes. My love of the year-end Wrapped playlist is shared by millions of users. It is highly anticipated and counted down to every single year. The “Made For You,” tab was added in March of last year. It features tons of different playlists curated for the user. There are artist mixes, decade mixes, genre mixes, daily mixes, and more. The Chief R&D Officer at Spotify, Gustav Söderström, said, “There isn’t just one Spotify experience. There are actually more like 345 million different Spotify experiences—one for each listener. Every day, half a trillion events—whether they are searches, listens, likes, or countless other actions—take place on Spotify, powering and guiding our machine learning system” (“Introducing”). Spotify seeks to make each user have their own unique listening experience no matter what they are listening to. The algorithms try to create the perfect mix no matter what mood or feeling the listener is in. None of the competition care this much about listener experience, and none of them have the algorithms to compete.
Sarah Lefkowitz (cont.)
ReplyDeleteI think the biggest threat to streaming services are other music services. As more and more debut and expand, the competition only grows thicker. For example, Bandcamp and Epic Games’ new partnership is very threatening to all streamers. Both of these organizations have great reputations and a lot of money. This alone, is enough to be a threat to the other large streamers such as Spotify and Apple Music. However, this partnership could create more than those organizations have, making the competition even fiercer. “Bandcamp is working with Epic to expand internationally and to build on other fronts, including its album pages, mobile apps, merchandise tools, payment system, and search and discovery features, according to Diamond. Epic and Bandcamp also are working together on newer initiatives like Bandcamp’s vinyl pressing and live streaming services” (Spangler). The variety of services that come could from this partnership are way more than what the main services currently offer. Although this is just one example of a new platform, there are plenty being introduced all the time. Variety and originality are enough to take users away from what they know on Spotify or Apple Music and bring them onto new platforms.
Dredge, Stuart. How Many Users Do Spotify, Apple Music and Streaming Services Have?, https://musically.com/2022/02/03/spotify-apple-how-many-users-big-music-streaming-services/.
“Introducing New Spotify Mixes: Personalized Playlists Featuring Your Favorite Artists, Genres, and Decades.” Spotify, 1 Apr. 2021, https://newsroom.spotify.com/2021-03-31/introducing-new-spotify-mixes-personalized-playlists-featuring-your-favorite-artists-genres-and-decades/.
Spangler, Todd. “Epic Games Acquires Bandcamp as 'Fortnite' Maker Expands into Music.” Variety, Variety, 7 Mar. 2022, https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/epic-games-acquires-bandcamp-1235194180/.
Kaplan Part 1
ReplyDeleteThere is a clear winner of the music streaming wars as of right now. Spotify is dominating over all other music streaming platforms with more than double the paying subscribers compared to its competition. At the end of 2021, Spotify had 406 million subscribers, with 180 million of those subscribers paying for a subscription (Dredge, 2022). However, it is hard to stay on top. There are some current issues that may prevent Spotify from monopolizing for much longer.
A major issue that Spotify is facing is artists pulling their music from the platform. The reason many artists are currently pulling their music is because of Spotify purchasing and promoting Joe Rogan’s controversial podcast. Neil Young, a very famous artist, publicly announced that he would be pulling his music from Spotify because of Joe Rogan’s constant spread of misinformation about COVID-19. He did not want to work with a company that affiliated itself with someone like Rogan. Many other artists, inspired by Young, have decided to pull their music for the same reason (Andrews, 2022).
This is a major issue that Spotify is facing right now. This might lead to people boycotting Spotify and switching to another music streaming platform. It is hard to predict exactly how this is going to play out because it has come to light so recently. However, because of how polarized this country is politically, I believe it could have a huge impact on Spotify’s future. While other music streaming platforms do not have better long-term strategies compared to Spotify, this controversy is only going to help them. As long as other music streaming platforms stay away from public controversy, they could steal many of Spotify’s subscribers.
Spotify dealing with this controversy does not take away from the issue that all music streaming platforms are facing, money. There has been a lot of talk around artists not making enough money from their songs being steamed. Many artists struggled to make a living over the pandemic because their revenue from concerts was gone and they had to solely rely on payout from music streaming services. With streaming services only paying artists a fraction of a cent for each stream, that became a major issue. However, this is not something that was just brought to light. Artists have been complaining about being underpaid since the music streaming services first launched. This problem has still continued on for over ten years (Sisario, 2021). If music streaming services do not start paying artists more, there is a good chance the artists may try to pull their music from the platforms.
Spotify may currently be winning the music streaming wars, there are a lot of issues that need to be dealt with. While music streaming services appear successful on the user end of the spectrum, there are a lot of problems between the streamers and the artists. The longer these music streamers withhold proper pay, the angrier the artists are going to get.
Kaplan Part 2
DeleteWork Cited:
Andrews, T. M. (2022, February 23). Spotify backlash offers rare insight into reeling music industry - and struggles of working musicians. The Washington Post. Retrieved March 7, 2022, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/02/14/spotify-young-rogan-music-industry/
Sisario, B. (2021, May 7). Musicians say streaming doesn't pay. can the industry change? The New York Times. Retrieved March 7, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/arts/music/streaming-music-payments.html
Dredge, S. How many users do Spotify, Apple Music and streaming services have? music:)ally. Retrieved March 7, 2022, from https://musically.com/2022/02/03/spotify-apple-how-many-users-big-music-streaming-services/
Spotify will be winning the “music streaming wars” for a variety of reasons. How many users do Spotify, Apple Music, and other streaming services have?” from Musically Spotify currently as 406 million users and 180 million subscribers. According to an article posted on BusinessofApps.com titled “Spotify Revenue and Usage Statistics (2022) Spotify has seen great success and has been consistently gaining subscribers. The article states “Spotify generated €7.85 billion revenue in 2020, a 16% increase year-on-year (Iqbal, 2022).” This article explains the success Spotify has had through these statistics and shows that in every category Spotify has seen a consistent increase over the years. It is consistently being used more, and reaches a variety of age demographics, which contributes significantly to their success. According to the article “According to a chart from this article Spotify consists of 26% users ages 18-24, 29% ages 25-34, 16% ages 35-44, and 19% 55+. This is a huge contributing factor to their long-term success as well. Because it is divided so evenly between such a variety of age groups, they are not just holding the attention of one specific group. They are used by everybody. Which is why they will remain on top.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the article “Spotify Has a Gen Z Problem. Or Is it An opportunity?” from Bloomberg.com there is a large age group that is loyal to Spotify, the numbers are much closer than they appear from this article, as mentioned in the previous article discussed. However, this article brings up some important points about Spotify’s success. For example, the article states “When it comes to audio, Spotify is already ahead of many of its direct competitors since its audience trends younger than Apple or Amazon. Spotify has sought to increase appeal to Gen Z podcast listeners by doing deals with social media influencers (Shaw. 2021).” This article also talks about the success TikTok has contributed because it has become a platform for trending songs that can be found on Spotify. This article mentions that TikTok is creating their own music platform, but this is not a threat to Spotify as they have become a household name. This article also talks about the successful features its flaunts that other platforms cannot compete with. For example, the article states that “Gen Z accounts for most of the people using Blend, a shared playlist between friends. (Spotify didn’t share how many people are using Blend, however.) Gen Z is also the most engaged audience with Spotify’s annual Wrapped campaign, a recap of your listening over the past year (Shaw, 2021).” These features make the platform stand out, and they are continuing to create new features. For these reasons, Spotify will be winning the” music streaming wars”. They have made a name for themselves, they have features that other platform cannot compete with, and they continue to grow every year. Their biggest threats are other streaming platforms such as Apple Music and YouTube, but their numbers do not compete. And they do not have the same reputation that Spotify has. The biggest threat facing all streaming services are the rise of new platforms, but I am confident that Spotify will stand its ground and remain successful.
Works Cited
“Spotify Revenue and Usage Statistics (2022).” Business of Apps, 19 Jan. 2022, https://www.businessofapps.com/data/spotify-statistics/.
Bloomberg.com, Bloomberg, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-12-19/spotify-has-a-gen-z-problem-here-s-how-it-s-learning-from-tiktok.
How Many Users Do Spotify, Apple Music and Streaming Services Have?, https://musically.com/2022/02/03/spotify-apple-how-many-users-big-music-streaming-services/.
There will always be that rivalry between Spotify and Apple Music users; each user thinks their platform is the best of the best. It is pretty apparent that the most competitive platforms in the music streaming wars are these two platforms: Spotify and Apple Music. These platforms are the most popular, especially among Generation Z.
ReplyDeleteWith 406 million users and 180 million subscribers at the end of 2021, Spotify is winning the streaming wars (Dredge). Apple Music, Amazon Music, Tencent Music, SoundCloud, and the rest of the streaming services fall significantly below Spotify in reference to subscribers. Now, Spotify has a lot of benefits to it. It has a student discount, includes podcasts, along with many other features that makes people, like myself, drawn to it over other platforms. The question is, will Spotify stay at the top or does a different service have a better chance?
With the start of the pandemic in 2020 and the trend of using the internet, music streaming services were the only way for musicians to make their music. Spotify having the most monthly subscribers, all eyes were on them. TikTok was also being used during this time and young artists were promoting their music which linked to Spotify, creating more revenue for their company. The problem with Spotify is that many working musicians are slowly leaving the platform. “For each dollar of revenue Spotify earns, 58.5 cents go to the owner of a song’s sound recording (usually a record label), Spotify keeps 29.38 cents, 6.12 cents got to whoever owns publishing rights (usually the songwriter) and 6 cents goes to mechanical rights (often, but not always, owned by the songwriter), according to research from 2016 by Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, a professional services firm” (Andrews). With the problem of artists not receiving the amount of money that they should, Spotify will soon reach a decline in sales because many musicians will leave the platform.
As Spotify will start to decline in the future due to their lack of pay, Apple Music will be on the rise. They also have the student discount and podcasts, but what makes them stand out is their pay towards musicians. “The average per-play rate on Apple Music is a higher $0.01” (Andrews). As we learned earlier, Spotify artists aet paid between $0.0033 and $0.0054 per play, not ideal. With Apple Music having 60 million subscribers as of 2019, I can definitely see this number increasing as more artists gravitate towards their platform.
The biggest threats that music streamers face today is the decrease in artists abiding to these platforms. “To earn a decent income, an artist needs roughly 120,000 streams consistently per month, and that is considering he/she is the only rights holder of the track, which is seldom the case” (Clark). With less musicians streaming their music on these platforms, that means less music for us to listen to, causing us to eventually delete the app. Music streamers will eventually hit a decline if they don’t change their ways soon.
DeleteOverall, Spotify is currently at the top of the music streaming wars, but not for long. Apple Music has been a close component in this race, and I see their company passing Spotify soon because of the difference in pay towards artists (as slight as it may seem). As long as musicians are getting paid the right amount and customers aren’t paying too much out of pocket, the music streaming app of choice should be on a steady incline to success.
Works Cited
Andrews, Travis M. “Spotify Backlash Offers Rare Insight into Reeling Music Industry - and Struggles of Working Musicians.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 23 Feb. 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/02/14/spotify-young-rogan-music-industry/.
Clark, Brian. “7 Of the Biggest Problems with the Music Industry?” Musician Wave, 9 Feb. 2022, https://www.musicianwave.com/biggest-problems-with-the-music-industry/.
Dredge, Stuart. How Many Users Do Spotify, Apple Music and Streaming Services Have?, 2022, https://musically.com/2022/02/03/spotify-apple-how-many-users-big-music-streaming-services/.
Benjamin Upson Part 1
ReplyDeleteThere is a clear winner in the “music streaming wars” and that company is Spotify. If you look at the statistics, it’s very clear that they hold the largest subscriber base among all of the big contenders out there today. Stuart Dredge of Music Ally states that, “at the end of 2021, Spotify had 406 million monthly active users, including 180 million premium subscribers and 226 million ad-supported (i.e. free) listeners” (Dredge). It’s not even close for second place either. Apple Music holds 60 million subscribers, which is far behind the dominance that Spotify has on the rest of the music streaming industry.
I believe that Spotify will continue to stay at the top going forward as there are plenty of benefits to using this platform. Tyrell Bibbiani of Glance praises the platform, writing that “their bread and butter is a library of millions of songs (over 40 million) and a massive number of playlists” (Bibbiani). As a subscriber to Spotify Premium like myself, I like having lots of options for music. The interface is very accessible on both the website and app and the custom playlist mixes that are generated from their algorithms based off my own customized listening habits. It’s relatively affordable for college students as you only have to pay $5.99/month compared to the usual $9.99/month rate. Let’s also not forget that the newly added Spotify Wrapped feature is an end-of-year treat for all users. It’s now an annual tradition for people to share all the popular songs and artists that they listened to, for how long and even how many times. If you’re not in on it, you’ll be missing out.
The biggest threat facing the music industry right now is the lack of sustainable compensation for artists that are streaming their music. As a result of this, some are threatening to pull their content from the platform. Travis Andrews of The Washington Post reports that, “artists are paid between $0.0033 and $0.0054 every time their song is played on Spotify. The average per-play rate on Apple Music is a higher $0.01” (Andrews). For example, that means 100,000 plays for a song, multiplied by the lowest rate listed from Andrews ($0.0033), only calculates to a mere $330 profit. This is absolutely nothing in the big picture to an artist in today’s music landscape. If these companies don’t begin paying artists more money, then it wouldn’t be surprising for even more to pull their content off.
Benjamin Upson Part 2
DeleteThere is another threat out there with artist controversy and backlash, much like what occurred last month between an all-time classic artist Neil Young and UFC commentator and podcaster Joe Rogan with Spotify. These are two names that you never would have expected to hear together. Young accused Rogan of spreading COVID-19 misinformation through his podcast and made the decision that if Spotify wanted to associate with that, then he didn’t want any part of it. Young had his music pulled from the platform just days after the announcement. Other artists also decided to pursue leaving for similar reasons.
Even with Spotify’s continual success, the company has to be wary that things can change rapidly if not handled properly. These are both a pair of ongoing issues that Spotify has to continue working around in order to preserve their subscriber base and reputation as the most popular music streaming service. This also goes for all music streaming services across the board as it’s crucial for the streamer-artist relationship to improve in order to maintain the platform's brand. If that happens, Spotify will likely continue to be the leader of this industry.
Works Cited
Andrews, Travis M. “Spotify Backlash Offers Rare Insight into Reeling Music Industry - and Struggles of Working Musicians.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 14 Feb. 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/02/14/spotify-young-rogan-music-industry/.
Bibbiani, Tyrell. “Why Spotify Is the Outright Best Music Streaming App.” Glance, 3 Dec. 2019, https://thisisglance.com/why-spotify-is-the-outright-best-music-streaming-app/.
Dredge, Stuart. How Many Users Do Spotify, Apple Music and Streaming Services Have?, Music Ally, 3 Feb. 2022, https://musically.com/2022/02/03/spotify-apple-how-many-users-big-music-streaming-services/.
In the music streaming wars, Spotify is the apparent winner. Spotify has over 400 million users. Apple Music has only around 60 million subscribers and the rest of the music streaming services are slowly trending behind them. Spotify at one point was not always on top. Apple Music was once on top because at the time apple and iTunes were trusted. Spotify was a very foreign name in the 2010s with access to smartphones. People weren’t going to consume and listen to music on an app that was not widely known. At one point both apple music and Spotify were both free well making the competition unanimous. But in Spotify Gen Z has a problem it discusses how Gen Z isn’t using their app as much. “The average person in Gen Z listens to fewer podcasts than millennials, Gen Xers, or baby boomers. Some of this may be a function of their youth. People listen to podcasts on their way to work, and in transit. Young people don’t work and often travel with their parents. Young people also listen to the radio less often than older people(shawn)” The pandemic has something to do with using the app. Fewer people for the past two years have not been able to travel and commute so having a reason to listen to the podcast was as apparent as it use to be. Spotify can stay on top but in the Washington post about Spotify backlash, Spotify may be in for a rude awakening. Some podcast such as the Joe Rogan podcast spreading false information about coronavirus and other culturally offensive topics, and having no power and ownership of music is growing concerns for the brand. “Spotify’s clash with Young shed a new light on the inner workings of a music industry still adapting to the demand for digital music and offered new insights into how artists are paid and the power of streaming services to act as a gatekeeper to millions of music lovers(Andrews)”.Since musicians don’t have ownership of music and record labels get a percentage of earning touring and other promotions of music aren’t that easy to do anymore. The pandemic changed things making streaming the main source of income for the most artist. Getting fair pay as an artist in this day and it’s getting more difficult ad time progresses. The main way Spotify can stay on top is by figuring out what the artist and consumers want. “Vogel said the lyrics feature was tested “in multiple markets around the world to find out how important to users it was.” Questions the company asked: Did it boost engagement? Did factors like geography or a listener’s age influence who used it?(Vereckey)”.Doing tests that will benefit the users will make Spotify untouchable. For the artist, giving them fair compensation for their work is something that needs to be looked into. If this isn’t fixed more artists may be inclined to pull their stuff from Spotify streaming services and only have it on apple music. Tidal, Amazon, and others.
ReplyDeleteAndrews, Travis M. “Spotify Backlash Offers Rare Insight into Reeling Music Industry - and Struggles of Working Musicians.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 23 Feb. 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/02/14/spotify-young-rogan-music-industry/.
ReplyDeleteVereckey, Betsy. “4 Strategies for Digital Growth from Spotify's CFO.” MIT Sloan, 21 Dec. 2021, https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/4-strategies-digital-growth-spotifys-cfo.
Shaw, Lucas. “Spotify Has a Gen Z Problem. Or Is It an Opportunity?Luca.” Bloomberg.com, Bloomberg, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-12-19/spotify-has-a-gen-z-problem-here-s-how-it-s-learning-from-tiktok.
Shawn Baker Part 1
ReplyDeleteThere’s no question that when it comes to which music streaming company is on top, it’s Spotify. Spotify has 406 million monthly users, and 180 million subscribers, blowing most of their competitors out of the water (Dredge). The only two companies that come close are Tencent Music and YouTube Music. Tencent Music has 636 million monthly users, more than Spotify, but only has 71.2 subscribers, aka paying customers. YouTube has more than 2 billion monthly users that listen to music, a lot more than Spotify, but only 50 million actually pay for it through YouTube Music and YouTube Premium. (Dredge). When it comes to actually paying customers, which matters a lot more, Spotify is clearly the winner.
With Spotify adding tens of millions of paying customers every year, Spotify seems almost unstoppable, almost. TikTok has been growing lately with their own music service called Resso, (owned by ByteDance, which owns TikTok) which is available and popular in Brazil, Indonesia, and India. (Shaw). TikTik is also huge among Generation Z, a demographic that Spotify, and other music streaming services in general, struggle to gain popularity in. Generation Z don't listen to as many podcast as previous generations. Podcast are important content for music streaming services, so this is a bit of an issue for them. (Shaw). Instead of listening to podcast and using music streaming services, Generation Z are on TikTok, and if TikTok continues to grow their music service, it’s only natural that they will gravitate towards that then other music services. This could cause problems in the future for Spotify if TikTok is able to consistently gain popularity in younger generations, and able to smoothly transition them to their music service, stealing future customers from Spotify. However, Spotify is working on this. An appeal of TikTok is that in the videos, consumers get quick snippets of songs, and if they like it, they can easily look it up. Spotify is looking at adding a feature that allows this for their music, as well as their podcasts. (Shaw). This would also allow for Spotify to gain more data in their users and have a better understanding of what their music taste is. (Shaw).
With that said, I don’t think Spotify will be dethroned anytime soon, it’s just too popular right now. Actually, in general, music streaming services are very popular right now, and nothing seems to really be in their way, except for a negative image. Many artists have grown frustrated with music streaming services as they’re paid the bare minimum (around 13% of overall income) for having their music on these services, while the companies make most of the profit (Bakare). It’s also been put into question how fair these services are when it comes to how much control artists have of their own music on these services. Because of this, there has been some major backlash against these services, demanding for more ownership rights and better pay for their artists. (Bakare) In order to keep positive brand image, these are issues that need to be addressed, as music streaming services that fail to do so could lose artists from their platform, fail to gain any new ones, and even lose customers as they won’t want to use a platform that they feel is mistreating their favorite artists.
Shawn Baker Part 2
DeleteSources:
• Dredge, Stuart. How Many Users Do Spotify, Apple Music and Streaming Services Have?, 3 Feb. 2022, https://musically.com/2022/02/03/spotify-apple-how-many-users-big-music-streaming-services/.
• Shaw, Lucas. “Spotify Has a Gen Z Problem. Or Is It an Opportunity?” Bloomberg.com, Bloomberg, 19 Dec. 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-12-19/spotify-has-a-gen-z-problem-here-s-how-it-s-learning-from-tiktok.
• Bakare, Lanre. “The Music Streaming Debate: What the Artists, Songwriters and Industry Insiders Say.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 10 Apr. 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/apr/10/music-streaming-debate-what-songwriter-artist-and-industry-insider-say-publication-parliamentary-report.
Shannon Flaherty
ReplyDeleteThe company that is winning the “music streaming wars” is Spotify. Spotify topples over Apple Music in a way that I didn’t expect. I thought the two would be tied, and if not tied definitely close, but that is not the case at all. “At the end of 2021, Spotify had 406 million monthly active users, including 180 million premium subscribers…” (How). Apple Music shouldn’t even be considered to be in the same category as Spotify as they haven’t updated their numbers publicly since 2019. However “[i]n June 2019, Apple announced that there were 60 million people paying for an Apple Music subscription” (How). So even though Apple hasn’t updated their figures, just based on paid subscription comparisons, Spotify beats Apple Music by 120 million subscribers. That is not a small feat for Spotify. Also in the running is Amazon Music, with another old statistic from 2020, having 55 million customers. Amazon Music is different because “this includes people using Amazon’s Prime Music tier, which is part of an Amazon Prime membership” (How). So, we don’t actually know how many people are listening to Amazon Music, and how many people are just using their Prime membership to purchase things on Amazon. Globally, Tencent Music has 71.2m paying users (How) yet Tencent has 3 different music streaming services, so that might be like if Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music were all under one roof.
Flaherty 2
DeleteAccording to MRC data/billboard, in the U.S. 99% of Gen-Z, 98% of Millenials, 96% of Gen X, and 89% of Boomers use streaming services to listen to music in a typical week and on-demand audio streams surpassed 20 billion weekly (MRC). Clearly, the streaming platforms are all doing something right if they have over 88% of basically all generations listening to music via streaming. I think Spotify will remain at the top because it is doing all the right things of having bundle deals, having a student discount, and having an option for family sharing accounts. Spotify is appealing to its audience. “Barron’s magazine recently compared Spotify to Netflix, saying it could become the Netflix of audio” (Spotify), and I believe it already has. Spotify saw the demand for podcasts, invested in podcasts. Spotify chooses to be youth-focused “offering a 50% discount on their premium services” (Spotify) to students, knowing that 50% of their users are under the age of 34 (Spotify). The biggest threat facing all music streamers today is social media and streaming television. I too even find myself choosing to scroll through TikTok with Netflix going on in the background as opposed to listening to music- although it could be background noise too. I also am in the rare minority of Gen Z that chooses to listen to the radio when I get in my car as opposed to connecting my Spotify to play in the car (although I do that sometimes).
How Many Users Do Spotify, Apple Music and Streaming Services Have?, https://musically.com/2022/02/03/spotify-apple-how-many-users-big-music-streaming-services/.
“MRC Data's 2021 Year-End Report US Highlights.” Record of the Day, https://www.recordoftheday.com/news-and-press/mrc-datas-2021-year-end-reportus-highlights.
“Spotify & Student Attraction.” Crunch Digital Media, 10 Nov. 2021, https://crunchdigitalmedia.com/insights/spotify-student-attraction/.