Technology

A Visual Breakdown of Global Music Consumption

Published

4 months ago

February 6, 2023

Athul Alexander

Featured Creator

Article/Editing:

Pallavi Rao

This image shows a breakdown of platforms music listeners prefer to use.

A Visual Breakdown of Global Music Consumption

To maximize any chance of success in the music business, aspiring artists must gain an understanding of how music is consumed and how that is changing alongside technology.

This graphic from Athul Alexander highlights global music consumption habits. Data is from 2022 and is sourced from a survey of over 44,000 people from 22 countries by IFPI that asked people their primary mode for consuming music.

As of 2022, paid subscription services (i.e. Apple Music, Spotify) are the most preferred option for listeners, accounting for nearly one-fourth of main platform share.

Rank	Service	Share	Examples
1	Paid Audio Streaming	24%	Spotify, Apple Music
2	Video Streaming	19%	YouTube
3	Radio	17%
4	Purchased Music	10%	Vinyls, CDs, purchased digital albums
5	Ad-Supported Audio Streaming	8%	Amazon, Deezer
6	Short-form Videos	8%	TikTok
7	Social Media Videos	5%	Facebook, Instagram
8	Live Music	4%	concerts, livestreams
9	Other	6%	music on TV, phone-to-phone transfers

Short-form video platforms like TikTok, with an 8% share of primary music listeners, are a fast-growing medium. Several young artists have found initial success and traction using these platforms over the past few years.

And though video “killed the radio star,” it hasn’t killed listening to music on the radio. A healthy, 17% of respondents picked radio as their primary avenue for listening to music.

Streaming Supremacy and Virality

There’s no doubt that the internet has revolutionized how music is being consumed.

Including all video and music streaming, internet-based music consumption was the primary choice for 64% of respondents. That’s not even accounting for livestreams or music purchased through the internet.

Platform	Share
Internet-based	64%
Non-Internet Based	37%

This internet-heavy metric is being reflected on the business side as well, with 75% of the music industry’s revenues in the U.S. coming from streaming.

However, for artists, streaming revenue is usually the third-biggest earner after live performances and sales.

But utilizing streaming to its fullest potential keeps modern artists in the loop. For example, Beyoncé was one of the first artists to utilize streaming platforms to release an album completely unannounced in 2013, a marketing move that has been replicated many times since.

Where does this data come from?

Source: IFPI

Data note: IFPI surveyed over 44,000 people from 22 countries, asking them about their primary mode of consuming music. They exclude India and China from their global figures to prevent the size of the population from influencing the global weighted average. Percentages may also not add up to 100 because of rounded figures.

This article was published as a part of Visual Capitalist's Creator Program, which features data-driven visuals from some of our favorite Creators around the world.

Related Topics:Music consumption artists music business

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Stocks

Ranked: America’s Largest Semiconductor Companies

This graphic visualizes the market capitalizations of America’s 15 largest semiconductor companies.

Published

4 days ago

June 5, 2023

Marcus Lu

Ranking America’s Largest Semiconductor Companies

As our world moves further into an era of widespread digitization, few industries can be considered as important as semiconductors.

These components are found in almost everything we use on a daily basis, and the ability to produce them domestically has become a topic of national security. For example, in 2022 the Biden administration announced the CHIPS and Science Act, which aims to strengthen America’s position in everything from clean energy to artificial intelligence.

With this in mind, we’ve ranked the top 15 U.S. semiconductor companies by their market capitalizations.

Data and Highlights

The data we used to create this infographic is listed in the table below. Year-to-date (YTD) returns were included for additional context. Both metrics are as of May 30, 2023.

Rank	Company	Ticker	Market Cap (USD billions)	YTD Return
1	Nvidia	NVDA	$992	180.2%
2	Broadcom	AVGO	$335	45.1%
3	AMD	AMD	$202	95.7%
4	Texas Instruments	TXN	$160	8.2%
5	Qualcomm	QCOM	$129	8.2%
6	Intel	INTC	$125	12.2%
7	Applied Materials	AMAT	$115	41.2%
8	Analog Devices	ADI	$89	9.2%
9	Lam Research	LRCX	$85	52.1%
10	Micron Technology	MU	$78	42.3%
11	Snyopsys	SNPS	$71	45.4%
12	KLA	KLAC	$63	21.8%
13	Marvell Technology Group	MRVL	$54	76.2%
14	Microchip Technology	MCHP	$42	11.2%
15	ON Semiconductor	ON	$36	36.3%

At the top is Nvidia, which became America’s newest $1 trillion company on Tuesday, May 30th. Shares pulled back slightly over the day and Nvidia closed at $992 billion. Over the past decade, Nvidia has transformed from a gaming-focused graphics card producer to a global leader in AI and data center chips.

In third and sixth place are two of America’s most well known chipmakers, AMD and Intel. These longtime rivals are moving in opposite trajectories, with AMD shares climbing 770% over the past five years, and Intel shares falling 47%. One reason for this is the data center segment, in which AMD appears to be stealing market share from Intel.

Further down the list we see Applied Materials in seventh, and Lam Research in ninth. Both firms specialize in semiconductor manufacturing equipment and thus play an important role in the industry’s supply chain.

Trade War Impacts

As tensions between the U.S. and China escalate, chipmakers are becoming increasingly entangled in geopolitical conflict.

In October 2022, the Biden administration introduced new export controls aimed at blocking China’s access to semiconductors produced with U.S. equipment. This impacted several companies in our top 15 list, including Lam Research and Applied Materials.

Shortly after the export controls were announced, Lam Research said it expected to lose upwards of $2.5 billion in annual revenues.

We lost some very profitable customers in the China region, and that’s going to persist, obviously.
– Doug Bettinger, CFO, Lam Research

In response, China announced in May 2023 that it would no longer allow America’s largest memory chipmaker, Micron, to sell its products to “critical national infrastructure operators”.

This is not the first time Micron has been involved in a controversy with China. In 2018, the firm alleged that Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit, a Chinese state-owned company, had solicited a Micron employee to steal specifications for memory chips. The U.S. Department of Commerce imposed export restrictions on Fujian Jinhua as a result.

Chipmakers on both sides of the Pacific will be closely watching as competition between these two countries heats up.