If streaming music is the future, then who gets to own that future? According to data recently released by NPD Group, both YouTube and Pandora are utterly dominating music streaming in the US, with players like iTunes Radio, Spotify, and Rdio fighting for remainder.
NPD surveyed thousands of smartphone users to figure out two things:
(a) do you actively stream music?
(b) if you do, what streaming services do you use?
Here’s what they found.
(a) 40% of US smartphone users are actively streaming music with one or more services. Of that 40%…
(b) Collectively, YouTube and Pandora deliver roughly 65% of all streaming music, with iHeartRadio a strong third.
Here’s an easier way to visualize the percentage of total music streamed.
Very interesting. No surprise with Pandora. Curious to know how the numbers shift country to country.
I am assuming this is data traffic.
Any one here with monetization numbers for all those servants of FREE.
Pandora with 40% of streaming traffic had total revenues of $427 last year.
Based on just this number we will not find single billion dollars in US streaming in 2013.
Ignorant stampede to dwarf-land!
Pandora is designed to be overnight a five billion dollar music store as long as we can force or convince music ID services to become cash registers of the industry. Today Shazam or Google lyric ID keeps the music in the open.
USA streaming revenue in 2013 will be around $1.4 billion USD.
It was at $1.033 billion USD in 2012, up 59% from 2012.
$1.4 billion in 2013 would mean an increase of 35.5%
RIAA will release the actual figure for 2013 sometimes in March
Yeah, Pandora is really an issue. It’s probably a bigger problem than the Pirate Bay to most artists.
An issue? They are paying infinitely more to artists than their primary competitor, terrestrial radio. And they actually play someone other than major artists. Unlike Spotify, they don’t outright cannibalize sales either.
Radio pays zero to performers, and pays songwriters very little (~3% of their revenue). Actually, for the vast majority radio’s history, you had to PAY THEM to every time they paid your song on the radio.
I am actually impressed with this 1.4B!
It looks like YouTube is very generous to Veevoo boys.
No matter what, we are dealing with giant meet grinder converting prime beef to dog food.
Yeah it must be horrible to get hundreds of millions of dollars of licensing revenue.
Pandora pays 70%+ of their revenue to artists, even artists who spit on Pandora as they take Pandora’s money.
Bullshit metrics that have been corrupted for sure. But, we will never know the truth.
The numbers definitely do not look right. iTunes radio has grown, but there is no way it is that high. Slacker shouldn’t be that low. iHeart has a great deal of content other than music. Youtube shouldn’t even be included considering there is no way to accurately measure what usage is music content and what isn’t. Plus not many people actually stream Youtube for extended periods of time on mobile devices due to the bandwidth usage, making it even less of a true music service.
And while iHeart has some custom stations, most of the apps usage is from the aggregated broadcast radio streams. The app itself isn’t that different that TuneIn and TuneIn was clearly excluded because it would have been pretty high ranking. These statistics really don’t mean much of anything.
What explains the dominance of a few big companies in this market space? Comcast is dominant because once it wires an area it is not economical for many other companies to wire the same area, and local government wont permit many overbuilds. But that problem doesn’t apply to Pandora and Rdio. So, what are the barriers that keep the big guys big and blocks the small guys from growing? (My sense is that people agree that a few big guys is the industry structure, even if the statistics are somewhat inaccurate.)
It’s how all tech industries are. Always one (sometimes two) companies that totally eclipses all others. Google for search, Facebook for social networking, Instagram for social pics, Amazon for everything but especially books, iTunes for music store, etc etc. Whoever gets there first and/or makes the biggest cultural impact and/or does it best will win enormously for a long time.
Pandora was the first/”best” (I don’t really like their algorithm) tailored streaming radio, YouTube was the first user generated video content site, Spotify is the most prominent streaming service, but Deezer or Beats might take them down. I highly doubt all three of them will survive simultaneously. At least one will struggle.
If….streaming is the future.
Streaming is our only future – there is no other way.
The trick for everyone is start discovery moment monetization.
You can listen for free as much as you want – if you want to enjoy it again YOU GOT TO PAY.
Let’s just limit tune info and grab by the face and force them to eat cash al tune ID services.
There is absolutely no reason to undress and run naked around the town.