Do you remember the days of going to the Virgin store or browsing the music section of Target and Walmart to get our music? This was not that long ago, but a whole new generation of music listeners never experienced the joy of selecting physical CD’s, cassettes or vinyl records.

In 2021, 81% of Americans aged 13+ use an audio streaming service - either free or paid music or podcast.

Listen to the music

About 77% of Americans 13+ use either a free or paid music streaming service. Music streamers use on average 2.7 different free and/or paid platforms. Most are using about 1 paid service, in addition to 1.7 free services.

Overall, Spotify leads the music streaming world. Pandora, while a very popular free streaming service, has a harder time converting consumers from free to paid. In fact, among the 30% who only use a free service, Pandora comes on top with 42% usage vs. Spotify at 36%. At this point only 6% indicate they exclusively use paid music streaming services, meaning the vast majority of those who use these services use the free versions.

The top services for free and paid are below:

• Top free services (Spotify 29%, Pandora 29%, YouTube Music 25%)

• Top paid services (Spotify Premium 15%, Amazon Prime 12%, Apple Music 11%)
   

What's the story?

Podcasts are also newer media channels which have been growing in popularity. Currently just under half of Americans aged 13+ (47%) have listened to a podcast in the last year. Spotify dominates in this channel with 50% usage followed by Google Podcasts (23%) and Apple Podcasts (22%). Americans younger than 45 are much more likely to listen to podcasts vs. those older than 45 years.

The most popular genre in podcasts is Comedy with News & Politics and History following closely behind. However, there are differences in who consumes the different genres of podcasts:

• Males are much more likely to listen to podcasts than females, and Sports & Rec is one of their favorite genres.  

• For Females, Self Help podcasts round out their top 3 genres.

Types of podcasts:

As the physical world is becoming more and more digital, it has a cascading impact not just on how we purchase these items but sometimes also how we consume them. This in turn creates opportunities for new communication channels. With streaming audio touching 8 in 10 Americans aged 13+, with most using the free versions, it proves to be another far reaching channel brands could use to reach consumers with their messages. In this case, the channel is also highly portable, likely to be with consumers during the most important step of their journey, while they are shopping in store or online.