Streaming Music Platforms Soar, Apple Surpasses 10M Subscribers
- by Gavin O'Malley @mp_gavin, January 11, 2016
Streaming music services saw total songs streamed nearly double over the past year, according to Nielsen. The number jumped from 164.5 billion in 2014 to 317 billion in 2015. Nielsen’s figures include both audio and video streams -- and video streams won out.
In fact, video streams more than doubled from 85.4 million in 2014 to 172.4 million streams in 2015, while audio streams were up about 83% from 79.1 million to 1444.9 million.
The new figures mirror reports that Apple’s music service has surpassed 10 million subscribers just sixth month after its launch.
Taken together, the news bodes well for the future of streaming platforms from Pandora to Apple.
It is less clear what the developments means for musicians and music labels, but they have reason to be optimistic. Indeed, while album sales were down by about 6% in 2015, the drop was less severe than the decline of about 10% witnessed in 2014.
Top artists continued to challenge the increasing clout of streaming services, in 2015. For instance, Taylor Swift pulled her album “1989” from every streaming service except Apple Music, while full songs from Adele’s “25” were only made available to those fans who were willing to pay up front.
Clearly, the unique distribution of “25” didn’t hurt sales. On the contrary, they totaled 3.37 million in week one, while the release set an all-time record for highest album share of total industry albums. It accounted for more than 41% of the total album sales that week,per Nielsen.
Some 1.64 million digital albums were sold in week one.
For its findings, Nielsen factored in streaming data from AOL, Beats -- which is now owned by Apple -- Cricket, Google Play, Google’s YouTube unit, Medianet, Rdio -- which is now owned by Pandora -- Rhapsody, Slacker, Xbox Music, and VEVO.
"It is less clear what the developments means(sic) for musicians and music labels, but they have reason to be optimistic."
It IS clear - - artists and songwriters have reason to be pessimistic. You have not addressed the issue of pay per stream, which is extemely low unless the artist has enough clout to negotiate. Only superstars approach what they made 15 years ago, which leaves new and/or unproven artists in the dust. Songwriters fare even more poorly. As for the labels, they have given away the store. In exchange for entire catalogs of music given over to the streamers, the labels negotiate pay deals for ad-supported (freemium) streaming that fall outside artists' contracts with the labels. Meanwhile, the US industry has crumbled, with revenue of roughly $6-7B last year, essentially flat for the past 4 years and down from rev of roughly $15B in 2000. So who is taking it on the chin? Artists and songwriters. The industry decline means much smaller investments are now being made in A&R, artist development, promotion, merchandising.