Over Half of Americans Now Subscribe to An Audio Service, Study Finds

More than half of Americans pay for an audio service (together with music streaming) of some type, in accordance with a newly launched examine.

This and different noteworthy info got here to mild in a just-published evaluation that, not restricted to streaming stats, touches upon a number of attention-grabbing factors. For reference, Spotify reported a mean of 236 million subscribers for 2023’s last quarter – with about 27 % of those paid customers, or 64 million people, based mostly in North America.

Apple Music has lengthy opted to not establish service-specific and regional person totals, however as is explored beneath, we aren’t with out helpful information on this division.

Returning to the aforementioned report, MusicWatch, citing findings from a core 4,000-person music examine in addition to a separate 3,000-person examine, decided that “paid music subscribers” had hit a report 109 million in 2023.

The sum jumps to 136 million “if SiriusXM and Amazon Prime music listeners are included,” per the analysis firm, indicating additionally that “over half the inhabitants are paying for an audio subscription.” (The assertion displays extrapolated outcomes from the above-noted surveys and refers significantly to customers age 13 and up.)

Normally, we’d have little concrete info to check the numbers towards. However, the NMPA in July of 2023 positioned Spotify’s stateside subscribership (as of February of the identical 12 months) at 44.4 million, in comparison with 32.6 million for Apple Music, 29.3 million for Amazon Music, 8.5 million for YouTube Music (with customers evidently preferring the Premium bundle), and a couple of.4 million for Pandora.

That comes out to 117.2 million – comparatively near the determine supplied by the examine. However, the NMPA information excludes platforms together with Tidal and Qobuz.

In any occasion, the newer of the sources additionally discovered that U.S. recorded music spending had spiked by seven % 12 months over 12 months throughout 2023, when a considerable 80 % of music streamers are stated to have “repeatedly” listened “to audio classes in addition to music.”

Lastly, by way of vital takeaways, roughly 90 % of “vinyl patrons plan to purchase extra or the identical variety of records in 2024,” in accordance with the examine.

Meanwhile, on the HD-audio entrance, one-third of streamer respondents “strongly agreed” that accessing “the highest quality sound is essential,” stated they’d “be focused on streaming or shopping for extra in hi-res or immersive codecs,” and spelled out that they’d “be prepared to pay extra for hi-res sound high quality,” per the evaluation.