Technology

A Visual Breakdown of Global Music Consumption

Published

2 years 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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Technology

Charted: Is Google’s Search Product Still a Monopoly?

This is the first time since 2015 that Google Search’s market share has stayed below 90% for three full months. An ominous sign?

Published

4 days ago

February 10, 2025

Pallavi Rao

This chart breaks down the average Q4 2024 market share of major search engine operators.

Google Search’s Market Share Fell Below 90% in Late 2024

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

This chart breaks down the average Q4 2024 market share of major search engine operators, including Google, Microsoft Bing, Yahoo!, and Yandex.

Data is sourced from Statcounter as of 2024.

Early Warning Signs for Google Search?

In the last quarter of 2024, Google Search’s worldwide market share dropped below 90%.

This is the first time it’s consistently stayed below 90% since 2015, averaging 89.6% in the last three months of the year.

Date	Search Market Share (Oct–Dec, 2024)
Google	89.7%
Bing	4.0%
YANDEX	2.6%
Yahoo!	1.3%
Other	2.4%

The reasons behind this drop are not entirely obvious. Industry media outlet Search Engine Land points out that Google’s market share has stayed fairly consistent, except for in Asia where three months of decline seems to have had effect.

Main search rivals, Bing and Yahoo! all gained share in the same time period.

AI is Coming For Search

The source for this graphic, Statcounter, does not measure search metrics for AI models like ChatGPT.

But ChatGPT and Perplexity.ai are coming for internet search. Both AI models offer searching for relevant information with their free versions.

While there’s no big dataset yet on whether users have changed behavior, AI-aficionados aren’t limiting themselves to traditional research or rewriting emails.

They’re also searching for everything from recipes, memes, and fashion inspiration: all of which are traditionally in the purview of Google Search.

And ads are coming to these models as well, with Perplexity announcing their monetization plans in November 2024.

What does this all mean? As it happens, 60% of Google’s revenue comes from search. And though the company has their own AI bot, all these new disruptors are likely to have an effect.

Learn More on the Voronoi App

All the billions of searches that Google runs on its servers makes for some really big data centers. And they need cooling. Check out: Google’s Thirstiest Data Centers to see how much water is required.