Music now has over 616 million paying streaming subscribers globally

MBW’s Stat Of The Week is a sequence through which we spotlight a single knowledge level that deserves the eye of the worldwide music business. Stat Of the Week is supported by Cinq Music Group, a technology-driven file label, distribution, and rights administration firm.

There have been 616.2 million subscribers to music streaming providers on the finish of H1 2022, in accordance with new estimates from Midia Analysis.

That was up 17.6% – or by 92.3 million – on the 523.9 million world subscribers that Midia counted on the similar half-year level of 2021 (see chart under).

And though that YoY subs progress margin (+92.3m) slowed in comparison with the identical enhance within the prior 12 months (H1 2020 to H1 2021, +109.5m), it maybe didn’t decelerate fairly as a lot as many feared… particularly amid this 12 months’s wider macroeconomic pressures.

One motive for that, suggests Midia, is China: In This fall 2021, the analysis agency estimates, Tencent Music Leisure (TME) overtook Amazon Music to turn into the third largest DSP globally.

In Q2 2022, says Midia, TME had 82.7 million subscribers, representing a 13.4% world market share.

Midia, in its new Music Subscriber Market Shares report, notes that whole web music subscriber additions within the first six months of 2022 (+42.1 million) had been down on the +53.8 million added within the prior 12 months interval (i.e. the primary six months of 2021).

Midia says this deceleration hints “on the slowing world economic system”, but in addition notes that extra world music subscribers had been added in 2021 than they had been in 2020.

Previous to the publication (on Thursday December 7) of Midia’s newest estimate, the earlier determine obtainable for world music subscriptions got here from world recorded music physique IFPI in its World Music Report in March.

IFPI reported that there have been 523 million customers of paid subscription accounts on the finish of 2021.

Different traits highlighted by Midia for the primary half of 2022 had been that Spotify, with what Midia estimates to be 187.8 million subscribers in Q2 22, remained by far the most important DSP, however that “its market share has steadily eroded since This fall 20″.

Midia provides that SPOT’s Q2 2022 world share of music streaming subs (30.5%) was down from a excessive of 33.2% in Q2 2018.

Spotify confirmed on the finish of Q2 that it had added 6 million web Premium subscribers to its person base that quarter, taking its whole world subs as much as 188 million (as of the tip of June). SPOT’s whole world paying subs viewers reached 195 million on the finish of Q3 (The three months to finish of September).

By way of Spotify’s rivals within the music streaming market, Amazon Music is estimated by Midia to be the fourth largest DSP globally with 82.2 million subscribers, whereas YouTube Music is estimated to be the fifth largest with 55.1 million subscribers.

(YouTube introduced final month that it had surpassed the milestone of 80 million paid YouTube Music and Premium subscribers worldwide).

For Apple Music, Midia says that the service “continued its long-term development of underperforming the market”, with an estimated 84.7 million subscribers recording a 13.8% market share, which Midia experiences was down 1.2% from Q2 21. 

Midia argues that Spotify’s market share decline “has a lot to do with the expansion of the Chinese language market (the place Spotify doesn’t function)”.

“The worldwide music subscriber market is approaching a pivot level, with the slowdown in mature, Western markets contrasting with extra dynamic progress in different areas.”

Mark Mulligan, Midia

“The worldwide music subscriber market is approaching a pivot level, with the slowdown in mature, Western markets contrasting with extra dynamic progress in different areas,” writes Midia’s Mark Mulligan in a weblog put up.

“It’s real looking to imagine that the worldwide recession and the natural maturation of the worldwide subscriber market will end in some slowdown of progress in 2023, even when the sector stays in any other case resilient.”

He added: “The slowing progress ought to be the catalyst for what wants to come back subsequent, particularly in developed markets: unlocking progress pockets by means of differentiation.

“Western DSPs have managed to develop with largely undifferentiated product propositions. Music rightsholders ought to discover artistic methods through which they will empower their DSP companions with differentiated content material property to allow them to super-serve particular shopper segments and thus unlock further progress inside them.”

Cinq Music Group’s repertoire has gained Grammy awards, dozens of Gold and Platinum RIAA certifications, and quite a few No.1 chart positions on a wide range of Billboard charts. Its repertoire contains heavyweights equivalent to Unhealthy Bunny, Janet Jackson, Daddy Yankee, T.I., Sean Kingston, Anuel, and lots of extra.Music Enterprise Worldwide