Where do you sit in this global study on music consumption?
The IFPI represents the interests of the global recorded industry in a variety of ways, including doing research into how people consume music. A new study has just been released called “Engaging with Music,” which looked at the music habits and attitudes of 43,000 people aged 16-64 in 21 countries. This is the first update to this study in a couple of years. (The 2020 edition was canceled because of COVID.)
There is a lot to digest here.
- People spend (on average) 18.4 hours a week listening to music, up from 18.0 hours in 2019. That’s the equivalent to listening to 368 three-minute songs every seven days.
- Spotify Premium and Apple Music are the biggest generators of revenue for the recorded music industry. Taken together, the two platforms account for 23% of all music consumption. Spotify’s free tier adds another 9%.
- YouTube the biggest source of free music, sucking up 22% of all music consumption. And watch out for TikTok. Its share is 11% and rising.
- Despite the wide availabilty of free music, 29% say they’re still engaged in piracy when it comes to getting their tunes with stream-ripping being the biggest source. (Given that access to so much music is free, you have to wonder why people bother.)
- Radio accounts for 16% of all consumption.
- About 9% goes to physical product listening such as CDs and vinyl.
- And even with all the free music available to everyone, 30% of the people in this survey still engaged in some kind of music piracy with stream-ripping leading the way.
Learn more here.
I still listen to the radio, but it’s not always on a device specifically made for picking up FM radio stations. I can stream terrestrial radio stations both locally and from faraway lands, or even online-only radio stations. It’s 2021, and the radio “dial” can be considered infinite.