A new research report highlights that music streaming services are still rapidly growing, and Spotify is still the leading platform. Apple Music, Amazon Music, and YouTube are all catching up and trying to gain significant market share by offering promotions and exclusive discounts to their users.

MIDiA Research shared its findings on the music subscriber market shares. The report says that the global base of music subscribers “continues to grow strongly with 523.9 million music subscribers at the end of Q2, 2021.” That number was up by 109.5 million, 26.4% from one year earlier. It was the fastest-growing year for the industry that’s ever been recorded.

Music streaming service market share Q2 2021

Global streaming music subscription market, Q2 2021

Source: Midia Research

Spotify remained the number one music streaming service with a market share of 31%, although it was down from 33% in Q2, 2020, and 34% in Q2, 2019. Apple Music is steadily growing and has a market share of 15%. The report states that Spotify is also rapidly growing, and it’s unlikely to lose its number one “leading position [to Apple] anytime soon.”

When it comes to growth, Amazon Music outperformed Spotify with 25%, compared to 20%, but YouTube Music managed to grow by a massive 50% in 12 months leading up to Q2, 2021, which is likely thanks to Google’s marketing techniques and persuading people to join the platform with exclusive deals and promotions.

“YouTube Music was the only Western DSP to increase global market share during this the period. YouTube Music particularly resonates among Gen Z and younger Millennials, which should have alarm bells ringing for Spotify, as their core base of Millennial subscribers from the 2010s in the West are now beginning to age.”

The report also mentions that the biggest growth can also be found in emerging markets, and Tencent Music also gained a lot of new subscribers.

“But the biggest subscriber growth came from emerging markets. Between them, Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) and NetEase Cloud Music added 35.7 million subscribers in the 12 months leading up to Q2 2021. Together, they accounted for 18% of global market shares, despite being available only in China. Yandex, in Russia, was the other big gainer, doubling its subscriber base to reach 2% of global market share. [..] Combined, Yandex, TME and NetEase account for 20% of subscriber market share, but they drive 37% of all subscriber growth in the 12 months leading up to Q2 2021.”

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