SPOTIFY COMMANDS HALF OF GLOBAL STREAMING MARKET—REPORT

Spotify’s slice of the paid-for music streaming marketshare pie is a whopping 49%, according to new research from our colleagues at Music Business Worldwide. The numbers were crunched following the release of the service’s full-year financial results last week, revealing a $185 million net loss despite revenues in excess of $1.4 billion. In 2014, Spotify posted $114.1b in revenues, breaking down to $113m from free users and just $1.11b from subscriptions.

According to the IFPI, global subscription streaming revenues for labels and artists rose 39% to a total of $1.57bn in 2014, making up 23% of digital revenues.

If we take Spotify at its word—that 70% of its revenues are passed to music rights-holders as royalties—then its subscription payout in 2014 would have been around $777m (or $771m at 2014 inflation), MBW’s Tim Ingham writes.

Applied to the IFPI’s figures, that would have made the premium digital revenues landscape in 2014 look something like this:

This revelation comes on the heels of a claim from Spotify Director of Economics Will Page during Music Biz 2015 that the service accounted for 10% of overall label earnings in Q1.