Reports: Saavn

With streaming growth set to slow in mature western markets by 2019, the next wave of fast growth will come from a mixture of mid-tier markets such as Mexico, Brazil, Japan and Germany. Beyond that, the streaming market will need to look towards emerging markets for growth.

China and India are undergoing significant change in their media industries. Both countries are viewed as two of the world’s potentially most lucrative economies for digital content, based upon their spectacular GDP per capita growth rate and their billion-plus respective populations.

Gaming in China and India is much further away from the mainstream than in key English-speaking markets. Gamers in both countries however form a highly digitally sophisticated, engaged and spending addressable consumer niche. And though the word niche is used proportionally to suggest less than 50% penetration, make no mistake – the gamer niches in both China and India already dwarf the English-speaking markets regarding number of users.

2016 was the year that streaming turned the recorded music business into a good news story, with revenue growth so strong that it drove nearly a billion dollars of total growth. Leading streaming services spent the year competing with ever more impressive metric, while playlisting and streaming exclusives became cornerstones of the wider music market both culturally and commercially.

2016 was the year that streaming turned the recorded music business into a good news story, with revenue growth so strong that it drove nearly a billion dollars of total growth. Leading streaming services spent the year competing with ever more impressive metrics while playlisting and streaming exclusives became cornerstones of the wider music market both culturally and commercially.

The global digital music industry may only be growing steadily (5% in 2013) but beneath the headline number is a richly varied picture of different services, diverse regional growth rates and competing business models. To better understand this marketplace, MIDiA Research conducted a Global Music Services Tracker.