Technology
A Visual Breakdown of Global Music Consumption
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.
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.
Markets
Charted: What are Retail Investors Interested in Buying in 2023?
What key themes and strategies are retail investors looking at for the rest of 2023? Preview: AI is a popular choice.

Charted: Retail Investors’ Top Picks for 2023
U.S. retail investors, enticed by a brief pause in the interest rate cycle, came roaring back in the early summer. But what are their investment priorities for the second half of 2023?
We visualized the data from Public’s 2023 Retail Investor Report, which surveyed 1,005 retail investors on their platform, asking “which investment strategy or themes are you interested in as part of your overall investment strategy?”
Survey respondents ticked all the options that applied to them, thus their response percentages do not sum to 100%.
Where Are Retail Investors Putting Their Money?
By far the most popular strategy for retail investors is dividend investing with 50% of the respondents selecting it as something they’re interested in.
Dividends can help supplement incomes and come with tax benefits (especially for lower income investors or if the dividend is paid out into a tax-deferred account), and can be a popular choice during more inflationary times.
Investment Strategy | Percent of Respondents |
---|---|
Dividend Investing | 50% |
Artificial Intelligence | 36% |
Total Stock Market Index | 36% |
Renewable Energy | 33% |
Big Tech | 31% |
Treasuries (T-Bills) | 31% |
Electric Vehicles | 27% |
Large Cap | 26% |
Small Cap | 24% |
Emerging Markets | 23% |
Real Estate | 23% |
Gold & Precious Metals | 23% |
Mid Cap | 19% |
Inflation Protection | 13% |
Commodities | 12% |
Meanwhile, the hype around AI hasn’t faded, with 36% of the respondents saying they’d be interested in investing in the theme—including juggernaut chipmaker Nvidia. This is tied for second place with Total Stock Market Index investing.
Treasury Bills (30%) represent the safety anchoring of the portfolio but the ongoing climate crisis is also on investors’ minds with Renewable Energy (33%) and EVs (27%) scoring fairly high on the interest list.
Commodities and Inflation-Protection stocks on the other hand have fallen out of favor.
Come on Barbie, Let’s Go Party…
Another interesting takeaway pulled from the survey is how conversations about prevailing companies—or the buzz around them—are influencing trades. The platform found that public investors in Mattel increased 6.6 times after the success of the ‘Barbie’ movie.
Bud Light also saw a 1.5x increase in retail investors, despite receiving negative attention from their fans after the company did a beer promotion campaign with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
Given the origin story of a large chunk of American retail investors revolves around GameStop and AMC, these insights aren’t new, but they do reveal a persisting trend.
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