30 + 30 + 11 + 4 + 3 + 3 + 3.5 + 3 = 87.5 million
(sources: company announcements; Pandora estimated)
According to the latest stats this morning, the music industry is rapidly approaching 90 million paying streaming music subscribers.
It was a nearly unthinkable level just a few years ago, but the music industry is now surging towards the all-important 100 million threshold. Now, with recent announcements from both Spotify (worldwide) and Sirius XM Radio (US), and Apple Music largely expected to tip 15 million in the coming months, the industry is approaching 90 million streaming music subscribers.
According to some insiders, the 100 million-mark could represent a major turning point in negotiations with YouTube, SoundCloud, Spotify, and other ‘freemium’ sites.
The math looks something like this:
- Sirius XM Radio (US): 30 million (announced this morning).
- Spotify (WW): 30 million (announced last month)
- Apple Music (WW): 11 million (rapidly moving towards 15 million, +4).
- Deezer (ex-US, most other nations): 3 million (direct paying and active mobile-bundled subscribers)
- Rhapsody (+Napster)(WW): 3 million
- SoundCloud Go: 0 (no figures announced)
- Rdio: 0 (currently bankrupt but being revived by Pandora)
- Pandora: 3.5 million (estimated on topline 3-5% premium take).
- Tidal: 3 million (1.5 million hi-fidelity)
- Xbox Music (aka, Groove Music): unknown.
- Google Play Music All Access: unknown.
500,000 subscriptions in 2025 will become the global crescendo of D. Ek DOPE.
The revenues generated from this happy crowd of semi-freeloaders will be:
$3.5 x 12 x 500,000 = $21 billion dollars!!!! at that point 1999 CDs = $80B.
MUSIC can be and should be LOCKED in virtual walls NOW.
Google today the biggest PIMP of free music prostitution would be the best gatekeeper and only entity able to do it without help of the government. Google would triple revenues as a main hub of $200B music industry.
If Google has no interest we have to make a united effort and get new fair use act which will prevent Google, Shazam, Soundhound and just few more entities from collecting, storing and processing someones property for thieves.
Uh, you do realize that Google just by itself is larger than the entire music industry? Arm-wrestle with a gorilla and be prepared to get your arm torn off. And for better or worse, the industry *relies* on YouTube for major marketing support, including a lot of “free” marketing self-generated by the masses. Finally the economics don’t add up, you assume that there’s $200B in “free” money sitting in consumers pockets waiting to be spent on music. That’s never been the case, so all that would happen is that people would stop using YouTube, and start using whatever else they could find that was free, because they don’t *have* the money to spend. Game over.