Skip to content Skip to Search
Skip navigation

A history of music streaming

By Andy Sambidge
Person, Human, Guitar Creative Commons
Ed Sheeran is the most streamed artist on Spotify

Napster and BitTorrent initially changed the way people thought about music in 1999 before being taken down for unauthorised use of copyright material.

iPod launched in 2001 and by the mid-2000s, Pandora and Spotify had both launched.

The music industry shunned the new platforms at the start, with several artists blocking them from using their material for trying to reshape the cost of music.

YouTube got its start in 2005 and by 2010 it was the most popular video service in the world while VEVO arrived in 2009.

Music streaming became the dominant revenue generator for music labels in the mid-2010s and Apple Music was launched in 2015.

Biggest music streaming platforms

  • Spotify was the largest music streaming service in the world at of the second quarter of 2021 with a market share of 31 percent
  • Apple Music was in second place at 15 percent and Amazon Music and Tencent Music each tied at third with 13 percent
  • There were 523.9 million music streaming subscribers in Q2 2021, according to Midia Research
  • This suggests Spotify had just over 162.4 million subscribers, followed by Apple Music at almost 78.6 million subscribers and Amazon Music and Tencent Music at about 68.1 million each
  • According to Midia, the music streaming market is continuing to grow, and increased by 26.4 percent to the second quarter of last year

Top 5 global digital artists (as of the end of April 2022)

  1. Ed Sheeran
  2. Harry Styles
  3. The Weeknd
  4. Bad Bunny
  5. Adele

(Kworb.net)

Latest articles

The SPA report highlighted a number of metrics as being on target, including home ownership of 53.7 percent

Third of Vision 2030 projects ‘completed’ government says

One third of 1,064 planned projects have been completed so far under the Vision 2030 economic transformation plan, the Saudi government said in its annual progress report on the reform programme.   The report also said 561 initiatives were on track, according to the state-owned Saudi Press Agency, publishing its major findings. It was not […]

Tawfik Alzaidi

Saudi director’s labour of love takes the kingdom to Cannes

For the first time a Saudi film has been selected to compete in the Cannes film festival, catapulting its little-known self-taught director into the limelight. Tawfik Alzaidi was so surprised that he’d managed to break through to the big time that he kept the news that his film Norah had been accepted for the ‘Un […]

Migrants attempting to reach Italy from Tunisia. About 270,000 so-called irregular migrants arrived in the EU via sea crossings last year

EU reveals total aid to North Africa to combat migration 

The European Union provided €673 million ($718 million) in funding to four North African countries from 2021-23 to help the quartet reduce what it calls irregular migration to the 27-member bloc, official data shows. Last year about 270,000 “irregular migrants” arrived in the EU via sea crossings, 64 percent more than in 2022. Crossings from […]

Joby Aviation's CEO JoeBen Bevirt (2nd left) at the signing of a multilateral agreement with the three Abu Dhabi government departments

Abu Dhabi signs multiple deals to launch air taxi services in 2025

A commute from Abu Dhabi to Dubai could take only 30 minutes next year, with the introduction of air taxi services significantly slashing travel time between the emirates. The electric aircraft manufacturer Joby Aviation signed agreements this week with Abu Dhabi’s Department of Municipalities and Transport, Department of Economic Development and Department of Culture and […]