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This is foremost an article about Spotify, not the music industry. The #1 streaming service is ad-supported Youtube, barely mentioned. https://www.musicbusine

This is foremost an article about Spotify, not the music industry. The #1 streaming service is ad-supported Youtube, barely mentioned. https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/more-music-is-played-on-youtube-than-on-spotify-apple-music-and-every-audio-streaming-platform-combined/ https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/more-music-is-played-...

zerr 7y ago
Isn't the audio quality usually worse than spotify?
- mcny 7y ago
  My understanding is Spotify (premium?) can also serve low quality audio when the user has a poor connection? YouTube compression is horrible but passable for many people, I think. People listened to music on AM short wave and medium wave just fine as well. The key point was that radio was readily available.
  - Biganon 7y ago
    320 kbps mp3 is not horrible at all. You wouldn't use it to archive your music, but it's barely distinguishable from FLAC.
    - geon 7y ago
      Pretty sure youtube only use 128 kbps, which is a lot worse. As you say, 320 kbps is nearly perfect.
      - danlugo92 7y ago
        FWIW youtube serves 128kbps AAC though, not mp3.
- paganel 7y ago
  For non-audiophiles such as myself the YT music videos are more than ok, I used to listen to YT music videos almost all day long until not that long ago while doing office work. The good thing about YT was that you could find almost anything on it, from that rare Italian giallo album to traditional Tajik music. Not sure if that’s still the case or if Spotify doesn’t offer the same huge variation of choices.
- Sharlin 7y ago
  99% of people don't care. And the hardware they're listening on is typically the bigger bottleneck anyway.
gchadwick 7y ago
#1 in the terms of time listened maybe (though your linked article indicates some doubt about that claim) but where's most of the revenue coming from? The article you link states YouTube has the highest total listening time but also has a graph showing audio streaming brings in over 5 times the revenue $5.5bn vs $0.85bn. I think we can safely say the majority of the $0.85bn is YouTube but how much of the $5.5bn is Spotify?
- redis_mlc 7y ago
  > how much of the $5.5bn is Spotify? The record labels will take all of that, so I'm not sure what your point is.

zerr 7y ago

Isn't the audio quality usually worse than spotify?

mcny 7y ago
My understanding is Spotify (premium?) can also serve low quality audio when the user has a poor connection? YouTube compression is horrible but passable for many people, I think. People listened to music on AM short wave and medium wave just fine as well. The key point was that radio was readily available.
- Biganon 7y ago
  320 kbps mp3 is not horrible at all. You wouldn't use it to archive your music, but it's barely distinguishable from FLAC.
  - geon 7y ago
    Pretty sure youtube only use 128 kbps, which is a lot worse. As you say, 320 kbps is nearly perfect.
    - danlugo92 7y ago
      FWIW youtube serves 128kbps AAC though, not mp3.
paganel 7y ago
For non-audiophiles such as myself the YT music videos are more than ok, I used to listen to YT music videos almost all day long until not that long ago while doing office work. The good thing about YT was that you could find almost anything on it, from that rare Italian giallo album to traditional Tajik music. Not sure if that’s still the case or if Spotify doesn’t offer the same huge variation of choices.
Sharlin 7y ago
99% of people don't care. And the hardware they're listening on is typically the bigger bottleneck anyway.

gchadwick 7y ago

#1 in the terms of time listened maybe (though your linked article indicates some doubt about that claim) but where's most of the revenue coming from? The article you link states YouTube has the highest total listening time but also has a graph showing audio streaming brings in over 5 times the revenue $5.5bn vs $0.85bn. I think we can safely say the majority of the $0.85bn is YouTube but how much of the $5.5bn is Spotify?

redis_mlc 7y ago
> how much of the $5.5bn is Spotify? The record labels will take all of that, so I'm not sure what your point is.