5 Streaming Trends To Keep An Eye On This Summer
As the development of the streaming music industry continues to bring out more questions surrounding issues of ownership and income, we're looking at five important numbers to watch, and what they might imply for the industry as a whole.
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Guest post by Melina Druga on MidemBlog
In this series of posts from Reportlinker, we review the latest music+tech news, with one big statistic per news item. All you need to know, in figures!
The streaming music industry is still evolving. On one hand, it has made music more personal. Users can build playlists and explore artists they otherwise wouldn’t have known. On the other hand, it has raised a number of important questions. Who controls ownership? How is revenue distributed? What does streaming do to the album?
Here are five streaming music trends to watch, some with long-term implications, by the numbers:
140 million: Spotify’s number of users as of June 2017, although it is unclear how many are paid subscribers. This is an increase of 40 million in the past year. This subscriber base is also larger than that of technology gients Amazon and Apple. Apple Music, by comparison, has 27 million users. Spotify has plans for an initial public offering, although the company says rumours it will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange are untrue. In November, Spotify purchased cloud startup Preact in an effort to attract and maintain subscribers. Source: The Independent
3-6: How long it will take before major labels become integrated into new classical streaming site Primephonic. Launched last month, the service is organising content not only by criteria like song title and album but also by composer, era, performer and sub-genre. The site also wants to educate users about classical music. Its stream payment system is different as well: 60% of net revenue goes to labels, while copyright fees are paid out of the remaining 40%. Subscriptions are $14.99 monthly with service available only in the U.S. and UK. Source: Billboard
95%: The percentage of songs written, on average, by someone other than the artist on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. However, music publishers and songwriters aren’t receiving their fair share of streaming revenue, according to Sony/ATV CEO Martin Bandier. “The fruits of our labour are not being equitably rewarded and we are not benefitting from the streaming revolution as meaningfully as we should,” he said when receiving the Lifetime Service Award at the National Music Publishers’ Association’s Centennial Annual Meeting in early June. Bandier believes the industry needs to start recognising the contributions of songwriters. Source: Music Business Worldwide
$10 billion: The amount of revenue streaming will generate this year, according to MiDIA’s Mark Mulligan. While this sounds impressive, streaming still isn’t providing most artists with full-time income. The income from streaming 5 billion songs is about 60% the income from selling 5 million physical albums. This means most artists are still performing live for additional income. In 2016, revenue from live performances was 43% the industry’s total. Source: Hybebot
19%: The stake Sirius XM purchased in Pandora for $480 million. The move comes as Pandora is seeking to raise more funds to compete against Spotify. Sirius benefits by having access to the digital radio industry. The majority of Sirius users listen while in their vehicles. In order to complete the Sirius deal, Pandora must pay equity firm KKR $22.5 million for breaking their $150 million deal. Pandora also will sell its ticket service to Eventbrite for $200 million. Source: Phys Org
