How many users do Spotify, Apple Music and other streaming services have?

Music streaming numbers: some clarifications

Sometimes the statistics around how many people are streaming music – and how many are paying for it – can lead to confusion and misinterpretation.

For example, we’ve seen one story suggesting that Amazon was “on course to overtake Apple Music” based on comparing an Amazon figure from January 2020 with one from Apple that hadn’t been updated since June 2019.

Another story claimed that “Pandora has overtaken Apple for second spot” in subscriber rankings, which mistakenly compared the former’s number of active listeners (most of whom don’t pay) to the latter’s paid subscriber count.

So, we’re trying something that will hopefully be useful: a post that we’ll update whenever a major streaming service updates its public numbers.

Caveats: we’re relying on the numbers given out by the streaming services. As industry lawyer Kevin Casini pointed out on Twitter, there can be debate about (for example) how those services define ‘paid’ subscribers. In other cases, the boundaries between active and registered users can be purposefully unclear.

Even so, it feels like it would be useful to have all the public numbers in one place. So here they are, with links back to the sources for the figures. This post was last updated on 23 April 2024. As this data gets updated often and/or unpredictably, it’s always worth searching our archives too.

If you’re a streaming service and have spotted that your figures are out of date here (or if we don’t have them!) please do email Stuart Dredge so that the article can be updated accordingly.

Spotify: 615m users / 239m subscribers

At the end of the first quarter of 2024, Spotify had 615 million monthly active users, including 239 million premium subscribers.

Tencent Music: 576m users / 106.7m paying users

Chinese firm Tencent Music has three different music streaming services – QQ Music, Kugou and Kuwo – ended 2023 with 576 million monthly active users, with 106.7 million of them paying for subscriptions and/or music downloads.

Apple Music: 60m subscribers (but this is an old number)

In June 2019, Apple announced that there were 60 million people paying for an Apple Music subscription. It hasn’t updated the figure publicly since then. Consultancy firm Midia estimated that Apple Music ended Q2 2022 with 84.7 million subscribers.

Amazon Music: 55m customers (another old number)

In January 2020, Amazon announced that its music streaming service now “reached more than 55 million customers globally“, with its music boss adding in a Financial Times interview that “nearly all” of those people were paying for a subscription. This includes people using Amazon’s Prime Music tier, which is part of an Amazon Prime membership. The number has not been updated since. Consultancy firm Midia Research has estimated that by Q2 2022, Amazon Music has 82.2 million subscribers.

YouTube Music: 2bn music users / 100m subscribers

In November 2020, YouTube’s global head of music Lyor Cohen announced that more than two billion people consume music on YouTube every month. That’s the main YouTube service, rather than its YouTube Music segment specifically. As for paying subscribers, YouTube had more than 100 million of those across YouTube Music and YouTube Premium – the latter includes access to YouTube Music – in February 2024.

NetEase Cloud Music: 205.9m users / 44.1m paying users

In March 2024, Chinese streaming service NetEase Cloud Music  reported 205.9 million monthly active users, and its number of paying users was 44.1 million in 2023.. As with Tencent Music, this isn’t a measure of ‘subscribers’ as it includes people who just bought digital album downloads too.

Deezer: 10.5m subscribers

Deezer used to cite the figure of 16 million monthly active users, but since going public it has switched to publishing figures for its paid subscribers. In February 2024 it had 10.5 million subscribers. 5.6 million of them were paying the company directly, while 4.8 million were classed as ‘B2B’ – those getting Deezer as part of other things (telco contracts for example). The number of people paying it directly for a subscription remained flat: 5.6 million in both 2022 and 2023.

Pandora: 46m users / 6m subscribers

US-only streaming service Pandora ended 2023 with 46 million monthly active users, down from 47.6 million at the end of 2022. Its number of paying subscribers was six million at the end of 2023 according to parent company SiriusXM.

Gaana: 185m users

Indian streaming service Gaana announced in August 2020 that it had 185 million monthly active users. The company did not say how many of those people are paying subscribers: the most recent data on that front comes from a December 2019 report by LiveMint, which cited a company spokeperson as saying Gaana had “more than 1 million subscribers” at that time.

SoundCloud: 175m users (but this is a *very* old number)

SoundCloud’s advertising site used to say that “each month, we also reach more than 175 million global users” – a figure that had remained unchanged back to 2014. The figure includes SoundCloud’s own site and apps, but also people who hear tracks embedded on other websites.

Boomplay: 75 million users

African streaming service Boomplay currently has 75 million monthly active users according to its website.

Audiomack: 30m users

Audiomack may be based in North America, but this streaming service is placing a lot of emphasis on Africa for its growth. By April 2024 it had more than 30 million monthly active users, up from 20 million in May 2022.

Mdundo: 34.5m users

Another African streaming service, Mdundo, had 34.5 million monthly active users in March 2024, up 41% year-on-year.

And now some global stats…

In March 2024, global labels body the IFPI published its annual Global Music Report, revealing that at the end of 2023 there were more than 667 million users of paid subscription accounts globally – up from 589 million at the end of 2022.

The wording is important there: the number of actual subscription accounts was 503 million, so that means around 64 million people who aren’t paying themselves, but are using a family plan paid for by someone else.

Another useful source is consultancy Midia Research, which regularly updates its estimates both on the global subscriber total, and the shares of individual services. Its most recent set of numbers were published in February 2024, although they refer to the end of Q3 2023.

Here’s its breakdown:

Top photo by Austris Augusts on Unsplash

Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences

Tools :: We Are Giant

With “fan communities” being on every artist’s team’s mind, we’re fans of the fact that…

February 7, 2024February 8, 2024

Read all Tools >>