We already know that catalogue tracks are taking a bigger share of streams. Now Spotify has published some more data showing that growth, with its latest ‘Fan Study’ report.
“Since 2020, the portion of our Global Weekly Top Songs Chart represented by catalog has increased by 155%,” explained the streaming service. “As of 2022, almost a third of charting songs are catalog.” That’s up from 13% in 2020 and 23% in 2021.
There are various other data points in the report, including links between catalogue streams and merch sales via Spotify, and the fact that “almost three-quarters of active streams (streams from places like listener playlists, album pages and artist profiles, or liked songs) are catalog”.
There’s also a big section on the impact of syncs, courtesy of a partnership with Netflix to analyse what happened to streams of tracks featured in 11 of its films and TV shows since 2017.
“It’s no surprise that we saw exponential increases in first-time listeners who had never streamed the artist on Spotify before – from 50% to 6000%,” explained the report. “But the sync’s impact goes even further: there was an average 109% rise in streams of the rest of the artists’ catalog, excluding the synced song, across the set of songs we analyzed.”
Kate Bush (of course!) Lizzo, Manu Pilas, William Bell, Baby Queen and Metallica are among the artists analysed in the study, with metrics going beyond streams to include shares, saves and playlist adds.
It’s a useful snapshot of the impact of syncs on that particular video service. However, the wider stats on catalogue music will feed in to the current debate about catalogue versus frontline listening within the industry, including concerns within some labels about the impact on frontline music and emerging artists.
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