On-Demand Audio Streaming Hits Record High, Is Up 62.4% Over Last Year (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: A new report from Nielsen out this week paints a picture of the booming on-demand audio streaming business, pointing to a significant increase in consumers' use of streaming services and record numbers of streams being served. According to the mid-year report, which focuses only on the U.S. market, on-demand audio streams surpassed the 7 billion figure for the first time ever during March of this year. That's audio streams, to be clear -- not just music. That is, the term "audio" also includes non-music streams like spoken word recordings and podcasts -- the latter of which has also seen rapid growth. Nielsen isn't breaking out music versus non-music streams in this new report, but a prior figure from the measurement firm stated that monthly podcast consumption had doubled over the past five years among adults. Still, the rise of streaming music services like Spotify and Apple Music have surely played a role in reaching the new milestones. Says Nielsen, streaming hit a high point of 7.5 billion weekly on-demand audio streams during the week ending March 9, 2017. That's the first time the figure had ever topped 7 billion, setting a new record. In addition, on-demand audio has been streamed over 184 billion times so far in 2017 -- a huge 62.4 percent increase over the same time period in 2016.

Comments

Clearly

[TFlan91]

Clearly the problem isn't people illegally downloading music, it's developing a business model that works, is consumer-friendly, and profitable.

I honestly don't even remember the last time I downloaded a song/album illegally. Pandora and YouTube (Yes, I understand some of these videos are illegal) have been my gateways for the last 5+ years.

Re: Clearly

[Opportunist]

You think anyone gives a shit about the RIAA. Think again.

The only reason is that it's simply more convenient to open YouTube and listen to whatever you want to listen to than to download something and hope it's not some asshole disguising gay porn as some Rhianna video. YouTube quickly takes care of such problems.

The only reason people reach for "official" sources is that the price is the same but the quality is higher. That's pretty much all.

Nielsen is outdated...

[flogger]

I was chosen to be in their survey. Lucky me. I informed them that I have no TV (Haven't since 1984 - Go figure.) I still wanted to take part in the survey since I so use services like netflix, amazon, etc. THey refused to let me be part of their data gathering... The days of regular media are gone. Nielsen refuses to let it go so they can perpetuate the importance of advertisers.

Economics

[Comboman]

Without piracy, the RIAA would still be trying to sell music on shiny plastic discs for $25 a pop at your local Sam Goody. Innovation only comes from the necessity of competing in a free market, not from government-granted, market-distorting regulations (i.e. copyright).

Re:No surprise

[enjar]

I grew up in the waning days of vinyl, the rise and fall of the cassette, and then the eventual move to CDs. I used to save my pennies to get something in one of those forms, or at least buy cassettes for dubbing or recording off the radio. A new recording was at least $15, maybe $20. That was a lot back then, so I'd spend a lot of time going through used record stores. We now spend $15/month on Spotify family, so basically $4/person for access to a catalog so deep it even surpasses my young teen dreams. The best part is that it Just Works ... I find something I want to listen to, I can stream it or save it local to my device, and no ads, DJ's talking over the songs, and as much as I want, plus everyone has their own playlists so I can listen to what I want but I don't have to try to share with tween music or what my wife likes.

NPR is a big winner with podcasts

[Bruinwar]

This American Life

Wait Wait Don't Tell Me

Radio Lab

& many dozens of others...

Good stuff, available when you're ready to listen. The advertising revenue for these shows have seen a massive increase (according to Ira Glass of This American Life). We've entered into a new era of audio & visual entertainment choices & quality.

Re:RIAA and streaming

[cayenne8]

The recorded music industry only changed the medium and now we can buy a la cart songs instead of a CD with one good song and 9 to 10 fillers.

While this has always been a problem with some artists....it seemed back in the day, when I bought albums, I'd not buy one unless it had 5+ good songs on it.

Perhaps today it is more telling of the dearth of talent out there?

Also, sadly, the song at a time lends itself to the death of the "concept" album, like Dark Side of the Moon, Tommy, Sgt. Peppers, Pet Sounds, The Wall....etc.

It is kind of sad really....often I'd buy an album, that I knew had some songs I liked, but since it was all packaged, I played the entire album and got to where I discovered and really came to enjoy the deeper cuts.

With streaming...you find yourself only getting 1-2 songs and listening to them over and over, but possibly missing out on the gems that are in the deeper cuts.