Spotify’s Competition

The music streaming industry is becoming increasingly competitive. Once dominated by Pandora, the industry now has a lot of competition, and because of this, the quality of music streaming platforms has increased. Since streaming music is so popular, they’re great platforms for marketers to reach their target audiences. So which platform is the best for marketers to utilize? Spotify is currently the most used music streaming service, but it certainly has some strong competition.

Spotify’s competitors include:

• Apple Music
• Google Play
• Pandora
• Tidal

Additional information on Spotify’s top competitors:

• Apple Music
  • $10/month
  • 30+ million tracks available to stream
  • 30 million active users
• Google Play
  • Free-$10/month
  • 30+ million tracks available to stream
  • 7 million active users
• Pandora
  • Free-$10/month
  • 30+million tracks available to stream
  • 81 million active users
• Tidal
  • $10-$20/month
  • 25+ million tracks available to stream
  • 3 million active users

To compare, Spotify has a free option and a premium option for $10/month and has 30+ million tracks available to stream. Spotify also has a whopping 140 million active users on their music streaming platform. As you can see, there isn’t much variation in regards to pricing and number of tracks available amongst the music streaming competitors, but there are some pretty big differences when it comes to the number of active users. Check out the graph below (provided by Business Insider) that compares the growth of Spotify and Pandora.

Since mid-2014 Pandora’s number of monthly active users has plateaued at around 81 million. Spotify’s active monthly users surpassed Pandora’s monthly active users mid-2015. One of the reasons why Pandora’s growth has plateaued is because the streaming service is only available in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States; whereas Spotify is available in over 60 countries.

So what are the implications for marketers? I think it’s pretty straightforward, Spotify has the most monthly active users, and they are still growing that user base exponentially. If you’re considering utilizing a music streaming social platform to promote your brand, you should definitely consider Spotify since it has such a huge user base that’s still growing.

If you’re wondering if your target audience uses Spotify, check out this post about Spotify’s Target Audience.