Adweek’s hottest music apps of 2015 mirror last year’s picks

The end-of-the-year roundups continue apace, this time with Adweek’s Hot List detailing the top 24 digital brands, startups, and games from 2015. The list included nods for the ‘hottest music app.’ The editors chose Spotify, pointing to its high-profile partnerships and sizeable audience as reasons for the designation.

Adweek’s readers, however, chose iHeartRadio as the top music choice, with 32.3% voting for the online audio service. Spotify came in second for the readers with 27.2% of the vote and Pandora’s 17.5% secured third place.

The results from the reader’s choice poll were exactly the same as last year’s. Adweek’s editorial pick for 2014 was Pandora. Although the publication did have a separate nod to YouTube under its video category, the fact that the list remained almost the same despite an interesting and active year for the streaming music industry shows how securely entrenched the top players are.