By the Numbers: The Streaming Music War (and Who’s Winning)

Fast-forward to 2014, however, and most people are listening the same way: through streaming music services. So just how widespread is the trend?

At FindTheBest, we counted a total of 102 separate services (counting basic and premium versions separately) that let you stream music (typically) from $0 – $10 per month. You can distinguish between on-demand services (like Spotify) that let you pick each song, and radio services (like Pandora) that choose songs for you. We’ll count down the top 10 services based on consumer awareness, and comment on the strengths and weaknesses for each.

To research all 102 services we reviewed, visit the music streaming topic on FindTheBest.

Note: YouTube, VEVO (music videos) and SoundCloud (a social sound creation and sharing platform) each boast over 200 million users, but none are strictly music streaming services, so you won’t see them in this countdown.

10. Last.fm (+) Integration with other services. Over the past six months, Last.fm has integrated with Spotify, YouTube, and VEVO, resulting in tons of new content and a giant catalog of tracks.

( - ) Today, people want plug-and-play solutions that suggest great tracks instantaneously, not (yet another) online community that takes weeks of ramp-up to really work.

9. TuneIn Radio

(+) Number of users. Due to a massive selection (100,000+) of stations, TuneIn Radio has plenty of customers.

( - ) Precise music selection. TuneIn Radio has more stations than you can ever listen to, but it lacks the smart, custom-style stations popularized by Pandora. With TuneIn, you’re less likely to find the perfect station, and more likely to bounce around.

8. Radio.com (+) A simple, memorable brand. Competitor TuneIn Radio has more overall users, but people are actually slightly more likely to recall Radio.com when polled.

( - ) Lacks a killer feature or particularly memorable interface

7. Slacker (+) A more fully-featured alternative to Pandora, it has 13x the songs of Pandora, but only a fifth the subscribers. Ability to replay songs, something Pandora’s music contracts simply won’t allow.

( - ) Pricing. Slacker’s big edge over Pandora is features, but you have to pay $10/month

6. Google Play Music

(+) Android integration. Google Play Music fills a music void for Android the way iTunes supports music on iOS devices.

( - ) it’s done little to promote a lower-priority Google service. And you can’t really blame it, given how razor-thin music streaming profit margins tend to be.

5. Spotify (+) The industry darling, Spotify is probably the most referenced on-demand music service in the world of tech.

( - ) Non-premium mobile options. For mobile-users, the (pricey) Spotify Premium is a must.

4. Rhapsody (+) Awareness. Rhapsody’s been around long enough to garner an impressive 40% brand awareness, an advantage that’s particularly helpful when it comes to rolling out new services like unRadio.

( - ) Just 2% of people have actually listened to Rhapsody

3. iTunes Radio + iTunes Match

(+) carbon-copy of Pandora, with similar features (smart stations) and annoyances (limited skips, ads). Meanwhile, the iTunes Match service ($25/year) lets you turn all that music you stole into legitimate, cloud-based versions stored in Apple’s servers. Once you’ve matched your library, you can play those songs from anywhere on any Apple device.

( - ) The Beats acquisition might keep the company out of real trouble, but for the time-being, it’s playing catch-up.

2. iHeart Radio

(+) iHeart Radio is the fifth most- used and second best-known music streaming service in the industry.

( - ) but it doesn’t have the immediate, tangible selling points of an app like Spotify (ex: find any song) or the attractive simplicity of a service like Pandora (ex: type in a genre and sit back).

1. Pandora (+) The radio concept itself couldn’t be simpler, but Pandora has had 14 years to build its brand and hone its matching-system, which gives the company a huge advantage over competitors.

( - ) Number of songs. Pandora has far fewer songs (~1 million) than most of its rivals, a discrepancy that could sneak up on it as the other services get better.

Read full article from Time

#Streaming #Spotify #iTunes #Apple #Lastfm #Pandora #TuneIn #App #Slacker #Radio #GooglePlayMusic #Rhapsody #iHeart #Market