Free Music Services Account For More Than 80% Of All U.S. Streaming

Free music services account for 80% of all streaming the in U.S., according to a new Music Watch survey. That's bad news for rightsholders, since free services pay far less per stream than paid. But it's also a reminder of how much room for growth there is for paid services

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Pandora and YouTube are the clear leaders in streaming music the second quarter of 2016, according to a new Music Watch survey. 30% of the time consumers spent streaming music occurred on Pandora, followed by YouTube at 27%. Spotify's free service accounted for 18% of online listening, iHeartRadio 5% and Vevo 2% for a total of 82% for all free ad-supported music services combined.Among paid on-demand music subscription services Spotify Premium accounted for 7% followed by just 2% for Apple Music.

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“Pandora’s strength in the market represents a major opportunity to migrate listeners to new tiers of services, including on-demand and revised lower-price offerings,” said Russ Crupnick, managing partner of MusicWatch. “At the same time Spotify is leading growth in the on-demand segment. Although Spotify Premium has a lead over Apple Music it is important to keep in mind that Spotify had quite a head start, and many Apple users are still in the trial phase.”Methodology: The MusicWatch Audiocensus is a monthly tracking study of internet users in the U.S. age 13 and older. The share of listening hours is based on the size of the audience for the respective services and the amount of time users spent listening to that service in an average week.