In an impressively steady 10-year shift, two-thirds of time spent with streaming music platforms has shifted from free sources to paid streaming. This is from Edison Research in its Weekly Insights email bulletin.
Edison describes the shift:
“In 2015, over three-quarters of the time spent with streaming music sources was spent with free platforms, at 78%. This high percentage continued into 2016 but started to lose ground to paid sources starting in 2017. 2020 marks the first year that paid sources surpassed free for the percent of time Americans 13+ spend with streaming music sources.”
Edison observes many reasons for the shift to paying for music streaming; intolerance for advertisements is one. Another is a general, cross-industry acceptance of media subscriptions.