Music Industry

Music Streaming = A New Superfan

Human behavior is an interesting thing. Streaming is changing the way people consume music. This is from Forbes.

Last week, media and technology analysis firm MIDiA Research released an infographic on streaming users’ listening habits. According to the graphic, 58% of streaming subscribers listen to an individual album or track only a few times, while 60% of subscribers engage in this behavior due to the desire to discover more new music. These numbers are significantly higher compared to the 30% and 27%, respectively, of overall music consumers with those attitudes, implying that paying subscribers tend to exhibit more casual listening behavior.

These findings put into question historical understandings of music fandom, and have particular urgency in today’s music landscape where streaming revenues are surpassing physical sales for the first time. Indeed, streaming is one of the fastest-growing music formats today: the 2014 Nielsen Music U.S. Report declared record levels of on-demand audio streaming in 2014 at 78.6 billion streams, a 60% increase from 2013. Spotify itself has over 20 million paying subscribers as of June 2015, a 100% increase from the previous year.

Furthermore, MIDiA’s findings are not the first to suggest that our music tastes are becoming both more widespread and more fleeting. Havas Media Group’s FANS.PASSIONS.BRANDS study from July 2015 claims that 59% of music fans ages 35 and older cite discovery as an important impetus for music consumption, while 56% of all music fans listen to 10 or more genres on a regular basis. The study even gives this phenomenon a title: the Shuffle Age.

Read the full article here.

Alan Cross

is an internationally known broadcaster, interviewer, writer, consultant, blogger and speaker. In his 40+ years in the music business, Alan has interviewed the biggest names in rock, from David Bowie and U2 to Pearl Jam and the Foo Fighters. He’s also known as a musicologist and documentarian through programs like The Ongoing History of New Music.

Alan Cross has 37937 posts and counting. See all posts by Alan Cross

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