Global Music Subscription Market Sees Growth, Led by Emerging Markets

[London - 8th February, 2024] - MIDiA Research, a leading research and insights firm, has unveiled its highly anticipated Music Subscriber Market Shares Q3 2023 report. This comprehensive analysis showcases the remarkable expansion of the global music subscription market, driven primarily by emerging markets.

The Q3 2023 report is the definitive, industry-standard  dataset and shows an impressive increase in global music subscribers, reaching a total of 713.4 million worldwide. This represents a growth of 90 million subscribers compared to the previous year's figure of 623.4 million in Q3 2022. Notably, this rapid growth brings the industry closer to the milestone of one billion music subscribers globally.

The report highlights the shifting dynamics of the global market, with distinct trends emerging between the Western and Global South regions. While traditional markets such as North America and Europe continue to play a crucial role, the Global South, including regions like Asia Pacific and China, is emerging as a growth powerhouse. 

Leading the charge in the global music subscription market is Spotify, which maintained its dominance in Q3 2023 with a commanding 31.7% market share. Spotify's growth was fueled not only by its stronghold in North America and Europe but also by significant traction in emerging markets. This trend is mirrored by other Western digital service providers (DSPs) like Apple Music, Amazon Music and YouTube Music, albeit with varying degrees of success.

China, in particular, stands out as a catalyst for non-Western growth, with platforms like Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) boasting a substantial subscriber base despite operating primarily within the region. This underscores the importance of regional players in driving growth where Western DSPs have limited presence.

While mature markets continue to contribute to growth, the report highlights the accelerating momentum of emerging markets, which are poised to become the primary drivers of future subscriber growth. Despite economic and geopolitical challenges, 2023 proved to be a robust year for music subscriptions, with even North America and Europe experiencing accelerated growth compared to the previous year.

“The fact that the global subscriber base grew faster in 2023 than it did in 2022, despite uncertainty in the wider economy, is testament to the continued strength of the music streaming market globally, but also points to the emergence of the Global South as a streaming market in its own right. ” - Mark Mulligan, Managing Director and Senior Music Analyst, MIDiA Research

For any questions or to arrange an interview, please reach Tsion Tadesse at Press@midiaresearch.com or tsion@midiaresearch.com.

MIDiA Research is a market intelligence and consulting firm with long-standing expertise in the business of entertainment and digital media. We work with various companies, from TV networks, streaming services, games publishers, developers, and record labels, to tech giants and financial organisations, providing a deep understanding of trends and innovations that are shaping the market and audience behaviours.

We help leaders formulate commercially actionable strategy in order to navigate the evolving digital-content and consumption landscape. We leverage multi-country consumer data, market forecasts, and other proprietary data tools to provide unrivalled insight into the rapidly changing, global, digital-content markets. Our coverage areas include music, video, marketing and media, games and audio.