Millennials Use Mobile Music Apps More Often Than Any Other Age Group
Wes Davenport is a music marketer, blogger, and publicist based in Nashville, TN. He writes about ways modern musicians can thrive at wesdavenport.com. Follow him on Twitter @wesdavenport for more music industry insights.
How much time do iOS users spend in different kinds of apps? Flurry, a mobile app analytics company, released a report that reveals how music, media, and entertainment apps stack up against the rest. While mobile music apps aren’t isolated from other entertainment apps, there are still strong takeaways for the music business.
First, let’s look at how iOS users spend time on their devices.
- Music, media, and entertainment apps rank 5th among the 8 categories, though the top 5 are relatively close together compared to the bottom 3 (News & Magazines, Social & Photo Sharing, and Games).
- Usage among all apps peaks in the evening.
- Usage never completely flatlines. Devices are in use all day long.
Things get a little more interesting when Flurry drills down into the Millennial user set. The results may surprise you.
- Millennials (here, ages 25-34) use mobile music, media, and entertainment apps about 75% more frequently than the other age groups.
- They also use social and photo sharing apps almost 20% more than other generations.
- Notice how Millennials under-index for games, utilities & productivity, and news & magazines.
Drilling down one step further, Flurry splits the age group into usage by males and females.
- When broken down by sex, Millennial males spend more than 100% of their time in music, media, and entertainment apps than the rest of the population.
- Millennial females spend roughly 25% more time in these apps than older age groups.
We can reasonably assume that Millennials are very hungry for music, media, and entertainment. The demand is still there, and this study indicates that it is much greater than other generations.
Flurry’s data is another touchpoint in a long line of events and studies that suggest there is plenty of desire and room for growth in the mobile music space. Naturally, it makes sense for the industry to push resources and development towards mobile platforms, be it through streaming music, artist applications, or other mobile experiences.
Investment in technology Millennials love should spur the long-term growth of these emerging revenue streams.
But what is “app use”? An app like Spotify is a “click and put in pocket” and doesnt make much room for use, additional information. It’s way to fluffy to show numbers like this, although I’m sure the end result is right