• by Aaron Baar , March 10, 2016

While the smartphone has become a popular platform for consuming video content, consumers are listening to music on their phones nearly as much and for twice as long. 

According to research from Parks Associates, 68% of smartphone owners listen to streaming music daily. That’s comparable to the 71% of consumers who watch short video clips on their phones daily. But those who listen to music do so for nearly twice as long per day (45 minutes of music vs. 24 minutes for video). 

“We’re seeing a boom in streaming music right now,” Harry Wang, director of health and mobile product research at Parks, tells Marketing Daily. “There’s a huge amount of music choices, and by nature, the services are multi-platform. There are many different ways to enjoy music.”

IPhone users consume more media content than Android users, and T-Mobile and Sprint customers stream more music daily than those using other carriers. Wang notes that T-Mobile has been subsidizing streaming music for its customers — essentially letting them stream for free — for awhile, and Sprint has offered unlimited data to many subscribers, which could explain the difference. 

“If you look at what’s happening in the mobile space, consumers are getting bigger bundles of data service packages, and music isn’t a bandwidth-hungry app on those plans,” Wang says. 

Amazon Prime Music is the most popular paid music subscription service, partly because its included with overall Amazon Prime membership. But Apple, Google and Spotify also offer paid subscription services, and there are a multitude of free and ad-supported services vying for customers, meaning competition is just heating up. 

“If you look at how music is being consumed, there are definitely a group of fans interested in premium streaming,” Wang says. “But there are even more that are included to subscribe to an ad-supported service or a smaller music catalog.”