Like many other sectors, the music industry has been significantly affected by covid 19 pandemic with the massive cancellations of live events and huge ticket sales revenue drops amid the lockdown with earning from live music events shrunk to the lowest level in the industry, artistes increasingly rely on income from streaming platforms.
According to data presented by Buyshares. co.nz, music streaming revenues are expected to hit $23 billion in 2021, a 50 percent increase compared to precovid 19 figures. Even before the pandemic, the music streaming industry witnessed impressive growth with revenues rising by a CARG of 20 percent year-over-year. Statistical survey showed that in 2017 the unified market was worth $10.5 billion, in the next two years this figure jumped to $15.2 billion. However, last year music streaming platforms witnessed the biggest annual revenue growth as covid 19 halted live events. Statistic show that revenues surged by almost 30 percent year-over-year and hit $19.7 billion in 2020.
The statistical survey showed the number of people using music streaming platforms also surged amid the pandemic and jumped from 425.6 million in 2019 to 626.2 million in 2021, more than 900 million people worldwide are expected to use music streaming service in the next four years.
As the world’s largest music streaming market, the united states of America is expected to reach 100.7 million users and $8.7 billion in revenue in 2021, a 16.6 percent increase in a year.
The Chinese market, the largest market globally is forecast to grow by 20 percent yoy and hit 2.2 billion value this year, almost four times less than the leading US. Nevertheless, with 177.7 million users in 2021, the country has the largest number of people using music streaming service globally.
According to Hootsuites Digital 2021 report, more than 81 percent of surveyed internet users in China reported listening to music streaming service last year, the united kingdom (UK) ranked as the third largest music streaming market with $1.4 billion in revenue this year.
As the biggest music streaming service globally, Spotify (NYSE SPOT) hits 34.5 million monthly active users and 155 million premium subscribers in December 2020 a 25 percent jump in a year.
While Apple (APPL:NASDAQ) hasn’t publicly commented on its subscriber count since reaching 600 million in June 2019, estimates from MIDIA Research put Apple music subscribers at 72 million in 2020 or half the Spotify count.

By: Jacob Obinna