The popularity of music streaming services has overtaken video sites for the first time in the U.S., according to market monitor BuzzAngle.
Services like Apple Music and Spotify delivered 114 billion streams in the first six months of 2016, compared to 95 billion video streams on sites like YouTube and Vevo. Overall, the market for streaming services increased by 58% year-on-year.
The surge in popularity was largely driven by the availability of albums by Beyonce, Rihanna and Drake. Rihanna's 'Work' is the most-streamed song of 2016 in the U.S, for example, while Drake's Views is the most requested album, being streamed 1.5 billion times since its release in April.
Adele's album 25 was not available to stream for seven months after it was released, yet figures show that it was streamed 168 million times in the first six days following its streaming debut on June 24.
The rise in streaming enabled music consumption in the U.S. to grow by 6.5%, despite CD sales being down 11% and digital sales falling 17%. Vinyl sales meanwhile enjoyed continuing growth, going up 17% to 3.1 million.
Spotify remains the world's most popular streaming music service with 30 million subscribers, boasting roughly twice as many paying subscribers as Apple Music, but the Swedish rival has been available in Europe for nearly eight years and in the U.S. since 2011, while Apple Music only just celebrated its first year of service.
Despite rising users and revenues, Spotify continues to operate at a loss due to expensive royalties and revenue sharing with music label partners. The service's losses rose by 10 percent to $195.7 million (173 million euros) last year, prompting some investors to question the viability of its business model.
For Apple Music's part, assuming that it maintains its current pace of growth, it is reasonable to assume that it will eventually eclipse Spotify as the top streaming service worldwide, benefiting from its prominence as a default app on iOS and offering a lengthy three-month free trial to get users hooked on the service.
Top Rated Comments
I own music, also. In fact, over 4,000 songs. Let's assume for the sake of argument that all of those songs were purchased at 99 cents (Which they weren't, since many of them were part of $15 albums/CDs that sometimes only contained 10 songs.).
At 99 cents each I could subscribe to a $10 a month streaming service for 33 years before I spent more money.
And I wasn't trying to say that music discovery was "rocket science." But I don't listen to over the air radio. It's full of commercials and fillers, and AM gives me uninterrupted music that is so much more diverse than anything that Clear Channel would push down my throat.
With music though, there's always new songs that are available. It's great that you bought an album a few weeks ago, but now a new album is available which you haven't bought yet, so you need to go buy that too.
If you're buying $150 worth of music per year, you'd be better off just paying $120/year to stream the music instead.
Also, you can have buyer's remorse when buying albums. You buy a crappy album. What now? You won't be able to sell it for anywhere near what you bought it for. You're not interested in listening to it. You're simply out that money. If you were using a streaming service instead, all you've lost is a few minutes worth of time where you listened to something you didn't enjoy.
I've discovered a lot of musical genres that it turns out I like that I wouldn't have ever risked before, because it would have cost money to buy their albums. Folk Metal is freaking amazing.
When I purchase music, I have it for life. With streaming, I am always just renting it.
What if Spotify et al. suddenly raise their prices? Either I have to pay up to continue accessing my playlists, etc., or else I no longer have access to any of it, and the hundreds of dollars I've already paid is completely useless to me going forward.
What if streaming services decide to make tiers (you can listen to these artists for X amount of money, these additional artists for Y amount of money) or make you pay extra for certain artists/albums/content? I either have to pay up, leave the streaming service and start buying all the music I've been paying to listen to before, or purchase that content elsewhere (if it's even available for purchase) while still keeping my monthly rental fee.
What if Apple suddenly decides it won't let Spotify on iOS anymore, or Spotify decides it will no longer support iOS? What if an entire label decides it no longer is going to feature its content on one given or any streaming services for whatever reason? We've seen numerous instances of artists, labels, streaming services, and OS creators not getting along for one reason or another.
There are many other what-ifs like this. I understand the upsides of streaming (as a Spotify subscriber and someone with thousands of purchased songs as well), and I do realize that CDs and digital downloads are not 100% futureproof (Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc. could decide one day to no longer allow anything but streaming services, Sony et al. could stop making CD players, etc.)...
But the move to streaming seems to take control out of consumers' hands and put us increasingly at the whims of huge corporations. Instead of being able to buy a song for 99 cents and be fairly certain you would always own access to that song, now we're moving to a model of renting music for the rest of your life and no guarantee you can keep/access any of it in the future. I'm not sure this is progress...
I can see why some people would rather go for streaming but I'll stick with buying the albums I really want. I do use free Spotify to sample new stuff but I always end up buying the album if I like it.