MusicWatch
While some recent industry statistics show a slowdown in the U.S. streaming market, spending remains quite healthy, according to new figures from market research firm MusicWatch.
Most notably, 50 million more Americans bought recorded music in 2024 than a decade earlier. Products included in that count are on-demand music subscriptions, paid internet radio subscriptions, physical formats such as CDs and LPs, and digital downloads. Some of that increase can be attributed to population growth over the last 10 years. The total U.S. population — including people under 13 and non-internet users who are typically not counted in market research surveys — grew by roughly 19 million over that period. But since the number of music buyers far outstripped population growth, most of the growth came from an increased interest in music products.
By MusicWatch’s estimate, about half of all Americans aged 13 to 70 — 132 million people — paid for a music subscription in 2024, including on-demand music streaming and satellite radio. Recently released RIAA figures put the subscription count at 100 million, which is an average for 2024 (meaning the subscriber count at the end of the year was higher than 100 million). Satellite radio company SiriusXM finished 2024 with 31.6 million self-pay subscribers, according to its latest financial results.
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Not only are more Americans spending money on music, they’re spending more — even after adjusting for inflation. Americans spent $112 per capita on recorded music in 2024, up nearly 10% from $102 in 2023, according to MusicWatch. Back in 2014, per-capita spending was approximately $80, which is about $91 when adjusted for inflation. Taking inflation into account, per-capita spending increased approximately 32% over the past decade.
Live music spending fared even better than recorded music, jumping 17% to $281. Ticket inflation explains some of that increase, but not all — the percentage of people who bought a ticket rose to 56% from 51% in 2023. What’s more, spending on music merchandise such as T-shirts rose 45%.
Over the last decade, streaming turned U.S. recorded music revenue growth positive after an approximately 15-year downslide caused by digital piracy and a shift to selling single-track downloads rather than albums. Digital download sales have declined sharply over the past decade — from $2.3 billion in 2015 to $329 million in 2024, according to the RIAA — and piracy still exists despite the sharp rise in music buyers. MusicWatch found that 14 million Americans admitted to stream ripping music files in 2024. “Music piracy isn’t the scourge it was 20 years ago,” MusicWatch wrote, “but it’s still happening.”
Music piracy isn’t the only old habit that dies hard. While CD sales have fallen 61% over the last decade, 56 million Americans still listen to CDs in the car, and 48 million listen to digital downloads while driving. Both numbers are in decline, MusicWatch notes, “but nevertheless they represent a massive pool of listeners.”
A dozen years after Spotify launched in the United States and 18 years into the existence of YouTube, streaming music is so ingrained in Americans’ behavior that 91% of the U.S. internet population used a music streaming service in the last year, according to the 22nd edition of MusicWatch’s U.S. Annual Music Study.
According to the report, released Monday (Mar. 11), the number of U.S. subscribers to music services such as Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music Unlimited reached 109 million in 2023 — meaning over half of U.S. internet users aged 13 and over now pay for a music streaming service. That number increases to 136 million if SiriusXM and Amazon Prime Music are included. SiriusXM is predominantly a satellite radio service that also has an internet product. Amazon Prime provides music streaming to customers who sign up for Prime for free shipping and other perks.
In 2012, just 56% of Americans used any type of music streaming service. That number jumped to 69% in 2014 and surpassed the 80% mark in 2018. But 2023 was the first time music streamers surpassed 90% of the internet population. MusicWatch counts music streaming on ad-supported audio platforms such as Spotify and Pandora, paid services such as Apple Music, and video services such as YouTube. For the sake of this survey, short-form video platforms such as TikTok and Instagram Reels are not considered to be music streaming platforms.
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The number of people who stream music has grown even faster than the proportion of the population that does so. In 2012, the U.S. internet population stood at roughly 125 million. By 2023, it had grown by nearly 60 million to 193 million. The way people access the internet has changed over that period. In the early days of the internet, people mostly had a dial-up home internet connection, but over time, home internet access improved while mobile internet usage exploded.
The prevalence of mobile internet has played an important role in music streaming adoption. Not long ago, MusicWatch principal Russ Crupnick noticed a change in the reasons why people paid for subscription services. Early subscription adopters were heavy users who found value in features such as playlists, connecting to their social networks and recommendations. Then, about five years ago, Crupnick found new subscribers’ reasons for paying a monthly fee started to change.
More recent adopters of paid music streaming services care more about access, not features, says Crupnick. As more people had smart speakers, bluetooth headphones and in-dash entertainment systems in their cars, it was important for services to offer a seamless listening experience as they moved from place to place. “It just works,” he says of subscribers’ rationale for paying. “It works everywhere that I want and works on all of my devices.”
Per-capita spending on recorded music increased 7% from 2022 as music subscriptions, CDs and vinyl all saw double-digit gains. That improvement came from both organic growth and price inflation, says Crupnick. Music subscription services pushed through a string of price increases after keeping their prices mostly untouched for many years — Apple Music in Oct. 2022, Spotify in July, YouTube Music also in July and Amazon Music in August.
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