The big 4 streamers gain market share compared to smaller players according to media and technology analysts, MIDiA Research. Their research published in a recent blog posting compares the published and estimated subscriber base of music streaming services at the end of June 2019. Globally there were 304.9 million subscribers up 34 million on the end of 2018. Annual growth was 69 million subscribers in the period from June 2018 to June 2019 which was exactly the same as the previous 12 months.
Spotify was the market leader with 108 million subscribers having a global market share of 35.6% which was the same as in 2017 and 2018. Apple and Amazon both grew market share with 18% and 12.6% respectively. Google has also benefited from its launch of YouTube Music growing from just 3% in Q4 2017 to 5.3% in Q2 2019.
With the big four all making gains the share accounted for by all other services fell from 32.8% end-2017 to 28.4% mid-2019. The other services are mostly single-market players such as Tencent (31 million – China), Pandora (7.1 million – US) MelOn (5.3 million – South Korea) with Deezer now the only other global player of scale (8.5 million).
MIDiA’s summary is that ‘2019 was a year of growth and consolidation, with the global picture dominated by the big four players and Spotify retaining market share despite all three of its main competitors making up ground.’ The analyst predicts a slowdown in growth for the US and UK but there is likely to be growth by regional streamers such as Tencent. It also singles out the impending launch of Bytedance’s streaming service which is currently limited to India and Indonesia as having the potential to energise the streaming market if Western rights holders licence content for Western markets.
The data and findings are taken from MIDiA’s forthcoming Music Subscriber Market Shares, which includes quarterly data from Q4 2015 to Q2 2019 for 23 streaming services across 30 different markets. For further information go here.
