For years, SoundCloud has been the largest dedicated music website in the world. Now, it’s getting outranked not just by a fast-growing class of ‘YouTube to MP3’ converters, starting with youtube-mp3.org.
When it comes to dedicated music websites, SoundCloud has long been the biggest elephant. Only YouTube was bigger, but now, a class of YouTube derivative sites are also outranking SoundCloud. According to stats published by SimilarWeb, a leading website traffic monitoring firm, SoundCloud is actually smaller than YouTube-mp3.org.
Here’s the SimilarWeb ranking of ‘Music & Audio’ sites, based on total visitors worldwide:
- Youtube-mp3.org
- SoundCloud
- thepiratebay.org
- spotify.com
- pandora.com
- convert2mp3.net
- azlyrics.com
- mp3.zing.vn
- genius.com
- ultimate-guitar.com
Amazingly, 2 out of the top 10 largest ‘music & audio’ websites are YouTube to MP3 converters, with convert2mp3.net. Similarly shocking is that the Pirate Bay is not only still alive, but it’s also ranked number 3 right after SoundCloud.
Another strange takeaway is this: the top-ranked music site in the world is not only a YouTube to MP3 converter, it’s getting sued by the entire recording industry.
So what does the American ranking look like? Perhaps unsurprisingly, SoundCloud is solidly number 1 in the US, while Youtube-mp3 slips to number 5.
- SoundCloud
- Pandora
- Spotify
- thepiratebay.org
- youtube-mp3.org
So why is that? The answer is likely that most Americans enjoy broadband access and connected smartphone access. And, given the heavy competition among streaming giants, the migration away from downloads has been more rapid. That suggests a broader shift worldwide, though changes can be glacial at times.
What about other key markets?
Shifting to the second-largest music market, Japan, reveals an entirely different ranking. Comically, neither SoundCloud nor Youtube-mp3.org broke the top 5.
- lineblog.me
- uta-net.com
- johnnysweb.com
- ticketcamp.net
- j-lyric.net
The UK market, ranked third (or sometimes, second), puts SoundCloud back on top:
- SoundCloud
- Spotify
- youtube-mp3.org
- convert2mp3.net
- thepiratebay.org
Meanwhile, we’re waiting for new developments in Youtube-mp3.org’s massive lawsuit against major recording labels Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music Entertainment. All three are alleging that the ‘Youtube to MP3’ converter is massively infringing on their copyrights, while Youtube-mp3.org says it’s merely shifting formats like an old school tape deck.
Stay tuned.
Re: Americans – Another thing to consider is that basically every major carrier in the US has now partnered with a streaming site, to allow its customers to stream from a particular provider without using ANY data at all.
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Interesting article Paul, but I was a bit bothered by the title which I think is misleading and most likely wrong.
I’ll try to explain why and hopefully I’ll be of some help.
Services like Similarweb all estimate the amount traffic these sites receive using public data (through requests coming from sources like toolbars) and based on that they give the site a rank that’s relative to the other sites in their database.
Now if you’re forced to use a ranking system made by one of these services then Alexa (owned by Amazon) is the standard and most respected company when it comes to these things. The main reason to why Alexa is preferred is because it has a lot more data to work as it’s bundled with other applications/services along with their own toolbar.
#130 – Soundcloud: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/soundcloud.com
#362 – Youtube-mp3.org: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/youtube-mp3.org
According to Alexa, youtube-mp3.org is 232 ranks lower than Soundcloud.
Although this might not be seen as much, it’s a lot considering that ranks are relative meaning that even 1 rank apart could mean a difference in thousands of unique visitors per day.
Something that’s also worth mentioning is that youtube-mp3.org is much weaker in the US (as you can verify by comparing the US ranks on both Alexa and Similarweb) and personally I believe that it’s slowly being killed off by streaming services like Spotify and Soundcloud are becoming more and more popular.
Sites like youtube-mp3.org has gained popularity less developed areas like South America and Asia and this I believe is due to high pricing (in those countries) and limited availability of streaming services (due to bandwidth and limited/expensive mobile data plans). If the pricing was a bit more dynamic then I believe that it could make up for the other problems and more people would subscribe to a paid streaming service.
Instead of putting energy and resources on going after these individual sites it would be more efficient to see the big picture and look for a more innovative solution which will turn youtube-mp3.org’s visitors into paid subscribers. A good place to start would be to see if it’s possible to adjust the pricing in those regions and the second step would be to improve the network infrastructures in those areas.
Ceding Boy