Research firm Counterpoint Research has published its latest estimates for the size of the music streaming market globally. It claims that by the end of March there were 394m music subscriptions globally, representing year-on-year growth of 35%.
Counterpoint also offered its estimates for some of the biggest players, suggesting that Spotify accounted for 33% of subscriptions and 30% of subscription revenues at the end of Q1 2020, followed by Apple Music (21% of subscriptions and 25% of revenue).
Amazon is the big grower though: Counterpoint claimed that its subscriptions more than doubled (104%) year-on-year, while its share of revenues was 12%, ahead of fourth-ranked YouTube Music (9%) and fifth-placed Pandora (5%).
If these figures aren’t that surprising, that’s probably because another number-crunching company, Midia Research, put out a very similar analysis last month. It reckoned that there were 400 million music subscribers globally at the end of Q1 this year, with year-on-year growth of 30%.
There are differences in those topline figures and how the two companies break down the market shares, but the overriding trends are clear: decent growth still in paid music subscriptions; Amazon Music showing the strongest momentum in terms of percentage growth; and a sense that we now have a ‘big three’ globally plus Tencent Music, whose business is focused on China.
All of these are estimates by research companies. The latest official stats we have are from the IFPI’s Global Music Report for 2019, which claimed there were 341 million ‘users of paid subscriptions’ (which includes non-paying users of family plans) at the end of last year, and that revenue from subscriptions grew by 24.1% in 2019.
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