Kantar can reveal that Spotify secured 29% of new audio streaming subscriptions in the 3 months to October 2019, and has the largest share of the market.
Pandora is the USA’s clear #2 service, with 18% share. They are followed by Amazon Music on 12%, and Apple Music on 11% share.
These are some of the initial findings from Kantar’s new Entertainment On Demand service, launching today in the USA. Entertainment On Demand is designed to help the music industry and investors understand the full consumer journey for digital video and music subscription services. It is based on a longitudinal panel of 20,000 consumers and boosted by 10,000 consumer interviews each quarter, including at least 2,500 new subscriber interviews.
Through the service, Kantar found that 61% of audio streaming subscriptions in the quarter were first-time subscribers, while 20% were ‘second or more’ subscriptions. 11% of subscriptions in the quarter were ‘switcher’ subscriptions, where an existing subscription was cancelled to fund the new subscription – far ahead of the 4% switching seen in the video streaming market.
Spotify leads amongst major players when it comes to customer advocacy, with a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of +54. Unlike its video service, Amazon Music has the lowest NPS of the tier-1 services, with an NPS of +28.
Entertainment On Demand provides both quarterly installed base and new subscription market share, alongside deep analysis on purchase motivations, customer experience, and diagnostics on ‘at-risk subscribers’, as well as guidance on acquisition and retention strategies.
Additional findings from the first quarter’s audio subscription behaviours in the U.S. reveal that, across the industry, the service’s own website is the most influential pre-purchase touchpoint, followed by advice from friends and family – emphasising the importance of subscriber advocacy in future growth.
For Spotify, the variety of podcasts, and the relative ease of creating personal playlists, are significant competitive advantages versus their competitors. Pandora’s discovery algorithm is hotter than any other service, we found, while Amazon Music leads in value for money perception – but lags in artist variety. Amazon Music drives significantly higher usage through Virtual Assistants than Spotify does. Meanwhile, Apple Music has a strong reputation for streaming sound quality.