Mid-year streaming report: Spotify & Apple Music expand but market’s global growth “steady not accelerating”

Mid-year global streaming figures from Midia Research showed that subscriber figures jumped 38% in the first half of 2018 to 229.56 million — and that at this point, Spotify and Apple Music retain their lead with exclusives and deep-pocket marketing.

Apple Music posted significant growth but not at the expense of taking Spotify payers away.

The total global 229.56 million mark at the end of June 2018 (from 198.6 million at the end of 2017) means that 62.8 million new consumers began paying for the privilege, rather than just using the services.

Midia described growth as “strong but sustained, rather than strongly accelerating.”

Breaking down the different services, Spotify maintained its lead with a 38% global market share with 83 million subscribers.

It also had the greatest amount of new subscribers this year, with 11.9 million new arrivals, which represented 39% of all new payers.

Apple Music is slowly closing in, adding two points to 19% of the global market, and representing 43.5 million subscribers.

It had 27.1 million at the end of the first half of 2017.

Midia noted: “Apple Music added the second highest number of subscribers – 9.2 million, with the US being the key growth market.”

Amazon Music’s Prime Music and Music Unlimited stayed at 12% with just a half a point growth, and now with 27.9 million subscribers.

Pandora added 0.5 million subscribers in the period and has a 3% global share.

China’s Tencent Music, which is about to float on the US stock exchange, has 17.6 million, according to Midia, which translates to an 8% share.

The report also looked at local services elsewhere in the world.

Read the report HERE.