Streaming Music Health Check Streaming’s Watershed Moment
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The 20,000 Foot View: 2016 emerged as a watershed moment for streaming music, with label streaming revenue growing strongly enough to lift overall revenues for all three major labels. Meanwhile Spotify and Apple registered record growth, soon followed by streaming announcements from Amazon, Pandora and iHeart Media. 2016 was the year that streaming stepped up its game, but many of the long-term market challenges remain, such as commercial sustainability of the music subscription business model, concentration of growth and consumer willingness to pay. In this report, we pull together data from record labels, music services and consumers to create a definitive assessment of where the streaming music market has got to. Key Findings
- By September 2016, Spotify had million subscribers (with billion paid to rights holders to date) while Apple had million subscribers
- Competition is hotting up with announcements from Amazon, Pandora and Vevo
- Each of the three major labels experienced strong streaming year-on-year revenue growth in 2016: Sony Universal and Warner
- In 2016, major label download revenue fell by million quarter-on-quarter, only million less than the million by which streaming grew
- Paid subscribers rose globally from million in 2015 to million in 2016. However, Spotify and Apple accounted for virtually all the growth of all streams were mobile, rising to for Napster of UK subscribers and of UK free streamers regularly stream on Wi-Fi of all streams come from playlists. However, just come from push playlists of UK subscribers say that playlists are replacing albums for them, while say they are using curated playlists more than months ago
- Just of Swedes spend more than on music, reflecting that subscriptions have capped spending of super fans of subscribers have changed subscription service, falling to just in Sweden thanks to Spotify loyalists of UK subscribers sign up to multiple streaming trials with different email addresses, while use free trials to get access to exclusive albums
Companies mentioned in this report: Alphabet, Amazon, Anghami, Apple, Beatport, Deezer, Google, iHeart, KKBox, Last.FM, MelOn, Napster, Orange, Pandora, QQ Music, Rdio, Sony Music, SoundCloud, Spotify, Tidal, Universal Music, Vevo, Warner Music, YouTube