Photo by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash

Alright, this will come as no surprise at all to the majority of Music Ally readers. YouTube is the biggest music streaming service in the world, with its scale – both in terms of its overall users and the more than two billion people who specifically consume music on it.

However, if you’re in the market for some new stats quantifying the bigness of YouTube for music, research firm YouGov has you covered. It has been surveying people in 17 countries about their media habits, including music streaming. In a blog post, it broke out some of the latter figures.

44% of Americans use YouTube for music, according to the study, putting it well ahead of Spotify (27%), Pandora (25%), Amazon Prime Music (24%) and Apple Music / iHeartRadio (both 12%). Interestingly, for 18-34 year-olds, the gap with Spotify is much closer: the services are used by 53% and 45% of that age group respectively.

The study gets even more curious when it comes to the UK though. There, YouGov claims that only 19% of the adult population use YouTube for music, compared to 31% who use Spotify. And for 18-34 year-olds, it claims that YouTube tallies just 25% compared to Spotify’s 54%. This really would be surprising, if it were true, especially as YouTube’s penetration rates in France match the US exactly – 44% of adults and 53% of 18-34 year-olds.

We’re reserving judgement, and will check with YouTube for any insights on its part into the UK. Meanwhile, YouGov’s findings on India do seem to chime with what’s already known: it claims 66% of all urban Indian adults use YouTube for music, ahead of Amazon Prime Music (37%), Gaana (33%), Google Play Music and JioSaavn (both 30%) and Spotify (24%).

Photo by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash

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2 Comments

  1. The UK figures don’t surprise me – most people I know didn’t realise YouTube have their own specific music streaming service. Spotify is the first service you think of when mentioning music streaming in the UK.
    I used to subscribe to YouTube Music specifically for their live content, but Spotify is a lot easier to stream to most smart speakers (particularly Sonos setups).

  2. Hey,
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