PayPal Survey: Downloading Music is More Popular than Paid Streaming

PayPal have released the results of a survey on digital media consumption in America. It was carried out last year and was released at the beginning of February. The global surveyed covered 10 markets and approximately 10,000 consumers aiming to examine how people consume digital media.

paypalSmartphone is the most popular device for music listening

According to the results, 86% of music consumers listen on their smartphone, making it by far the most popular device for music listening. Women’s mobile listening share was a lot larger than men’s with 90% of women preferring mobile versus 48% of men.

Downloading music is more popular than streaming

Music downloads have also found to be more popular than paid streaming, mostly due to non-millennials. 70% of older listener and 60% of millennials download their music.

This survey, however, only accounts for paid streaming services. Other reports, which do include free streaming services, have shown that streaming is more popular than downloading. The RIAA have reported that revenues from streaming music services surpassed those of digital downloads in 2015.

Source: PayPal Digital Media Consumer Survey

Apple is dominating music consumption

Apple dominates music consumption, with iTunes being the most popular place to purchase downloads. Furthermore, 37% of listeners prefer either iTunes or Apple music compared to any other music platform.

Pandora has the largest streaming share, with 23% of US music consumers preferring Pandora. Pandora only operates in the United States, New Zealand and Australia, making its strong performance all the more remarkable. Furthermore, Spotify was the second most popular streaming service, with a 13% share, closely followed by Google Play Music (12%). Amazon Prime Music had 9%.