Study: Global music streaming to rise at 13.31%

The global music streaming market is set to grow at a CAGR of 13.31% between 2016 and 2020, says a new report.

Global Music Streaming Market 2016 – 2020 is released through Market Research Reports, Inc., which bases its calculations on the present scenario and growth prospects. It splits the world’s regions into Americas, EMEA (Europe Middle East Africa) and APAC (including Australia and New Zealand).

According to the report, increased usage of smart devices is a key driver for this market. Smartphones and tablets are now essential gadgets for consumers worldwide. “Users mostly access music on their personal devices while traveling,” the report points out. “Therefore, the increasing penetration of smart devices at the global level will result in the market’s rapid growth.”

Further, the report states that intense competition and inconsistent user preference is a challenge to market growth.

“Competition among global music streaming service providers is very intense, especially in developing countries. The markets in the developing countries like India are highly fragmented with the presence of global and domestic players, leading to price wars among mobile application vendors since cost is one of the major differentiating factors for consumers in these countries. Further intensifying the competition is the fluctuating consumer preferences.”

However, it is not known to what extent piracy is growing the global music streaming market.

A report by MUSO, a tech company specialising in content protection and market research about piracy, indicates that the overall streaming market is expanding as pirates switch from downloads to streaming.

With better internet access, more widespread Wifi and increasingly tech-savvy pirate audiences, streaming accounts for close to three-quarters of all online TV and movie piracy. Of the 78.49bn visits to video piracy sites in 2015, a high 74% went to streamers.

The torrent now accounts for just 17.24% of audience visits to the 14,000 TV and film piracy sites tracked by the study.

According to data earlier this year from comScore covering the Australian market, Spotify is the largest with 2.985 million “unique monthly visitors” for December. It is followed by SoundCloud with 2.059 million, Pandora at 976,000 (its Australian listeners tune in on an average of nearly 2.5 hours a day), with radio apps TuneIn at 484,000 and iHeartRadio at 468,000.