Music Industry

What’s the truth about streaming music services and the number of people who use them?

God bless the people over at Musically.com for sorting through the data to come up with a definitive list (well, as definitive as possible) of how many people are listening to streaming music services. Here’s what they came up with:

  1. Spotify: 271 million users and 124 million paying subscribers
  2. Apple Music: 60 million subscribers (it doesn’t have a free tier so all users must pay).
  3. Amazon Music: 55 million customers (We’re unclear on how many pay and how many automatically get the service as a result of being Amazon Prime members.)
  4. Tencent: 661 million users and 35.4 million paying users. The Chinese giant actually runs three different streaming services, so those numbers reflect a total of all three.
  5. YouTube Music: 1 billion music users, 20 million paying subscribers. This is a rough estimate because it’s really hard to figure out how many people use YouTube just for music.
  6. Pandora: 63.5 million users, 6.2 million subscribers. Canadians can’t get Pandora, so we’re not part of this.
  7. SoundCloud: 175 million users, but that figure is at least five years old.
  8. Deezer: 14 million users, 7 million subscribers. The France-based service is available in over 190 countries.
  9. Gaana: 152 million users, 1 million subscribers. It’s the biggest domestic streaming in India.
  10. JioSaavn: 104 million users. Gaana’s biggest competitor.
  11. Anghami: 21 million users, <1 million subscribers. If you’re in the Middle East and North Africa, this is where you probably go.

Read more 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 38035 posts and counting. See all posts by Alan Cross

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