You Come at the King, You Best Not Miss 👑
Happy Friday everyone!
Earlier this week, research firm MIDIA released its quarterly report on the latest status quo of the music streaming market, and while Spotify remains the King, the over-looming question of how long is getting bigger 🌪
Before we get into that, elsewhere, the NFL dropped its trailer for the half-time show of the 56th Super Bowl to be held at the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California- & with an homage to West-Coast Hip-Hop, this warm-up for the actual show is not one to miss 🤩
💥Eminem: Rap God
💥Snoop Dogg: The Next Episode
💥Mary J Blige: Family Affair
💥Kendrick Lamar: HUMBLE
💥Dr.Dre: Still D.R.E
I’ve watched this clip at least 10x already, and with the Super Bowl returning to Cali & the Los Angeles Rams being in prime position win it, this half-time show is literally like the Avengers of West-Coast Hip-Hop assembling 🔥
Spotify’s still the King, but for how long?
According to a new report from research firm MIDIA, Spotify has more paying subscribers than any other audio streaming service operating globally, but its market share is declining 📉
At 31%, Spotify had the highest subscription market share in the global streaming business as of Q2 2021
This figure was down from 33% in the prior year quarter (Q2 2020), and down from 34% in the quarter a year prior to that (Q2 2019).
In spite of its shrinking market share, Spotify did add more subscribers in the past 12 months than any other platform globally, and with 165 Million of those being premium subscriptions, it’s not all that bad after all 🤷♂️
So who is actually breathing down Spotify’s neck and eating away its lunch?
While Apple Music is technically #2 in the pie, according to the MIDIA report, the “standout success story” among streaming services based in the West, was YouTube Music ▶️
With a 50% growth in subscriptions for the past 12 months, and already having the network effects of the massive library of YouTube to leverage off, it’s kind of obvious that maybe it’s not Apple Music, but YouTube that Spotify is most worried about.
Last September, Google officially reported that YouTube Music and YouTube Premium had crossed 50 Million subscribers, with users jumping from the free version to avoid Ads and enjoy an uninterrupted streaming experience.
With YouTube experimenting with ‘ Shorts ‘, its own take on short-form video and competing directly with Instagram Reels and TikTok, it’s not tough to imagine that the Google owned video streaming platform has big goals for expanding its arms and becoming a multi-media outlet.
So what is Spotify’s defence strategy here?
While the uproar over artists not being paid fairly on Spotify has become a tale repeated over & over again, the fact is that while YouTube and TikTok focus on video, Spotify has clearly targeted audio for its positioning.
With a massive investment into Podcasts, crossing roughly $1 Billion, Spotify has managed to bag the who’s who in the Wild-West of Podcasting (Joe Rogan for starters)
With no backlash of hearings in Congress, royalty payouts or threat of artists pulling out content, Podcasts have struck a sweet spot for Spotify, unlike Music, where a majority of cash flows go into the pockets of rights-holders such as Record Labels and Publishers 💸
An Emmy-winning HBO show I recently picked up- ‘The Wire’ has this chilling line of a hit-man warning his rival drug gang
The lead might be Spotify’s to lose, and YouTube might be showing the greatest appetite to be the challenger here, but as Omar says in the show:
“You Come at the King, You Best not Miss” ⚡️
Have a good weekend folks 🍻
Originally published at https://incentify.substack.com on January 21, 2022.
