YouTube is the Most Streamed on Music Platform

Last year IFPI's Global Report concluded 46% of all music streaming listening time was to be credited to YouTube excluding China. The research is based on figures from Ipsos 2017 that gauged internet use of people predominantly aged 16-64 in 13 of the globe’s leading music markets, including the US, UK, Germany, Japan and Sweden. These 13 countries account for 85% of the global music consumption. Of the 55% that has been accounted for video streaming the major chunk goes to YouTube while the rest of the 9% goes to sites such as Vevo and Vimeo. Paid (subscription) audio platforms claimed 23% of total listening, according to the IFPI, with free audio streaming on 22%. Together audio streaming accounts for 45% which is a percent behind YouTube. Notably, this also means that music consumption may also be preferred with video content.

IFPI on Value Gap

IFPI claims that audio streaming platforms contributed $5.57bn to artist and labels last year, while video platforms (mainly YouTube) paid out just $856m. MBW confirmed receiving communication from YouTube saying,

In the last 12 months alone, YouTube has paid out over $1 billion dollars to the music industry, just from ads and that number is growing year-over-year due to the licensing deals we have in place with the overwhelming majority of labels, publishers, and collecting societies.

The IFPI also claims that audio streaming platforms attracted just 272m users in total in the year, while 1.3bn music-using users turned to online video services. While the numbers for video stream seem very promising, the revenue to user ratio is extremely low compared to that of audio streaming. This implies that having the most music playtime may not make YouTube the most powerful streaming site and applications like Spotify, Saavn, Apple Music still hold important stake in the music streaming industry. This however, can change with YouTube introducing a subscription model that requires the active users to pay. Monetizing YouTube and other free video streaming platforms may find a way to reduce the value gap and increase the overall value of the music industry.