New study: Spotify crushes the tech giants

In a new study on music streaming, podcast and radio, we see that music streaming continues to grow. In most countries, more than half of the online population are now streaming music, while people are also spending more time listening to their favourite tunes.

Despite competition from Google and Apple, Spotify has taken the lead in music streaming. Even in the home market of the two tech giants, Spotify has surpassed YouTube as the most popular streaming service and is now number one, while Apple Music is dropping and YouTube Music has had a slow start.

At the same time, Spotify strengthens its dominance in the markets where the streaming service already had a strong position. In the UK, Denmark and Finland, Spotify has increased the number of premium subscribers significantly, while the streaming service stays on top with no competitors close in Sweden and Norway.

If we take a look at what people are looking for in a streaming service, higher quality and more functionalities on Spotify resonates with users, while the added benefit of having music videos on YouTube Music seems less important. Half of the respondents point to ‘quality of sound’ and ‘ease of making a playlist’ when asked which factors are important to them when streaming music, while only one in ten highlights ‘availability of video’.

Podcasts have become mainstream

Besides the growth in music streaming, we see that podcasts are getting increasingly popular. In all countries, more people are listening to podcasts, and overall, people are spending more time listening to podcasts. However, when looking across markets, there are still differences in how mainstream podcasts have become. In Germany, only 16% listen to podcasts, while more than twice as many (34%) listen to podcasts in the US.

Radio dropping but still bigger than music streaming and podcast

While music streaming and podcast continue to grow, the radio is dropping. Fewer people listen to the radio, and people spend less time listening to the radio. With that said, the radio is still the most used audio format with close to three quarters listening to the radio. However, whether people are listening to commercial or non-commercial radio stations depends a lot on the country.

In most countries, the majority both listens to commercial and non-commercial radio stations, but in Denmark, most people only listen to non-commercial radio. In fact, it is 53% of the Danish radio listeners who are only listening to non-commercial radio.

Music streaming more popular than radio among the young

Obviously, there are big differences between the age groups when it comes to consumption of music streaming, podcast and radio. Generally, the younger generations are adapting to the digital formats faster than the older generations, meaning that streaming and podcast are where you will reach most of the young, while the radio is still reaching 80% of the 46+-year-olds.

Though the radio is still the most used audio format overall, more people in the age group 15-35 years are streaming music than listening to the radio. And in some countries, there are almost as many podcast listeners as radio listeners among 15-25-year-olds.

Get further insights

In our study, you can learn more about the current state of music streaming, podcast and radio in the US, UK, Germany and Nordics. Enjoy!

The study is based on approximately 14.000 individual survey respondents across seven countries; The US, the UK, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland.

Download the full study and get further insights now: