Music Streaming Market Statistics for 2022
On this page you'll find condensed data on the global music streaming market with up to date industry statistics and figures for some of
the most popular music streaming services: Spotify,
Apple Music,
Amazon Music and
YouTube Music.
Last updated on .
Global Music Streaming Market
The total market size of the music streaming industry is valued at US $29.45 billion as of 2021 and estimated to reach US $34.53 billion in 2022, with a forecasted value of US $103.07 billion by 2030 (source: Grand View Research).
As of Q2 2021, 523.9 million people are subscribed to a music streaming service. The largest players in the global music streaming industry are Spotify at 31% market share, Apple Music (15% market share), Amazon Music (13% market share), Tencent Music ( 13% market share ) and YouTube Music (8% market share), according to MIDiA Research.
Music Streaming in the United States Market
There has been 872.6 billion music streams in the United States in 2020, an increase of 17% compared to 2019.
In the US, as of 2019, the most popular music streaming services are Apple Music, followed by Spotify and then Pandora.
Here are some the most popular music streaming services, along with some key numbers and statistics for each service:
Spotify
Spotify, a Swedish company from Stockholm, is today the largest and most popular music streaming service, with 31% of the global market share as of Q2 2021. Spotify was founded by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon on Apr 23, 2006, launched on October 7 2008 and became public in April 2018 on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: SPOT) via a direct listing. It had a market cap of $26.5 billion after the first day of trading.
Spotify is available either as a free ad-supported subscription or as a premium ad-free subscription for US $9.99/month. The maximum bitrate for the music streamed on Spotify is 320 kpbs (160 kbps for free users).
Spotify revenue
Spotify generated a total revenue of 9.67 billion euros (US $10.9 billion) in 2021. Compare this figure to a revenue of 7.88 billion euros in 2020, a 22.7% increase. In terms of net revenue, Spotify had a loss of 34 million euros in 2021 , compared to a loss of 581 million euros in 2020. Spotify is expected to start turning a profit in 2022 .
In 2021, 12.49% of Spotify's total revenue came from the ad-supported subscribers, and 87.51% of the total revenue came from premium subscribers (source).
Spotify employees
Spotify had 6,617 employees as of 2021, up from 5,584 the year before, a 18.5% increase. Spotify had only 311 employees as of 2011, and crossed the 1,000-employee mark in 2014.
Spotify users
Spotify had 180 million premium subscribers and 226 million ad-supported active users as of the end of 2021, for a total of 406 million monthly active users. Spotify is available in 183 markets.
Music on Spotify
Here are some key numbers about the music on Spotify:
- Over 82 million tracks
- Over 3.6 million podcast titles
- Over 4 billion playlists
- The top 5 most followed artists on Spotify are Ed Sheeran, Ariana Grande, Drake, Billie Eilish and Justin Bieber
- The top 5 artists with the most listeners on Spotify are Ed Sheeran, Justin Bieber , The Weeknd, Dua Lipa and Imagine Dragons
- The top 5 most streamed artists in 2021 were Bad Bunny, Taylor Swift, BTS, Drake and Justin Bieber
- The top 5 most popular podcasts on Spotify are The Joe Rogan Experience, Crime Junkie, Call Her Daddy, The Daily and Armchair Expert Umbrella with Dax Shepard
Sources: Spotify, Wikipedia and Chartable
Apple Music
The music streaming service from Apple, Apple Music, was launched on June 30 2015.
Apple Music had 60 million subscribers as of June 2019 and is estimated to have 78 million subscribers as of June 2021. The Apple Music streaming service is available in 167 countries .
Apple Music is the second largest music streaming service after Spotify, with a global market share of 15%. Apple Music is reported to have a stronger foothold on the US market than Spotify. Mashable reported that Apple Music surpassed Spotify in number of subscribers in the United Sates as of July 2018.
Some of the key people at Apple Music are Oliver Schusser as the VP of Apple Music, Brian Bumbery as the director of publicity and Trent Reznor as the creative officer.
Apple Music is available at the price of US $9.99/month, with a family plan at $14.99 and a student plan at $4.99 also available. A free trial is available when first subscribing to the service. The maximum bitrate for the music streamed on Apple Music is 9216 kpbs.
Apple Music Revenue
While the numbers for Apple Music are not made public by Apple, Business of Apps estimates that Apple Music had a revenue of US $4.1 billion as of 2020.
Music on Apple Music
Here are some key numbers about the music on Apple Music:
- 90 million songs
- 30,000 playlists
- The top 5 most streamed songs of 2021 on Apple Music were Dynamite by BTS, drivers license by Olivia Rodrigo, positions by Ariana Grande, For The Night (feat. Lil Bay & DaBaby) by Pop Smoke and Blinding Lights by The Weekend.
Source: Apple
Amazon Music
The music streaming service from Amazon, Amazon Music, was launched on September 25 2007. It was previously known as Amazon MP3.
Amazon Music had 55 million subscribers as of January 2020. The Amazon Music streaming service is available in 50 countries .
Amazon Music is the third largest music streaming service after Spotify and Apple Music, with a global market share of 13%. It is tied in terms of global market share with Tencent Music, a leader in music streaming for the Chinese market.
The Amazon Music service has been growing fast and is expected to surpass Pandora in terms of popularity in the United States in 2022.
Ryan Redington is the VP of Amazon Music.
Amazon Music is available in 3 different tiers: Amazon Music Unlimited, Amazon Music Prime and Amazon Music Free. Amazon Music Unlimited offers the full catalog of 90 million songs with HD and Ultra HD audio quality and is available at $7.99 per month. Amazon Music Prime is included for Amazon Prime subscribers and gives access to 2 million songs at SD audio quality. Amazon Music Free makes some select playlists and stations available for free at SD quality.
Music on Amazon Music
Here are some key numbers about the music on Amazon Music:
- 90 million songs
- The top 5 most streamed artists of 2020 on Amazon Music were Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Justin Bieber, The Beatles and Ariana Grande. This is over a year ago now, but more recent data about most streamed artists on Amazon Music doesn't seem to be available at this time.
Source: Amazon
YouTube Music
The music streaming service from Google/YouTube, YouTube Music, was launched on November 12 2015. The service replaced the previous Google Play Music as of December 2020.
On September 2nd 2021, Google announced that it has crossed the 50 million subscriber mark for its YouTube Premium offerings (which includes YouTube Music), but there's no breakdown given for subscribers of only YouTube Music, so at this time it's hard to tell exactly how many subscribers YouTube Music alone has. The YouTube Music streaming service is available in 100 countries .
Along with the United States, India, Brazil and Mexico are some of the largest markets for YouTube Music. (source)
YouTube Music has a global market share of 8% and has been growing fast, with a growth of over 50% between Q2 2020 and Q2 2021. It has been especially popular with younger generations like Gen Z.
Lyor Cohen is the head of YouTube Music.
YouTube Music is available for free with ads, or for $9.99 per month for an ad-free experience, known as YouTube Music Premium. YouTube Music Premium is also included as part of the Youtube Premium subscription which also includes ad-free viewing of YouTube videos, for $11.99 per month.
YouTube Music had a catalog of 50 million songs as of May 2020.
That's it for now! Stay tuned as I may decide to add details about other popular music streaming services like Pandora, Deezer, SoundCloud and Tidal.
Don't hesitate to reach out here if you notice anything that should be updated or if you think an additional piece of information should be added.
