PRIME MOVER: AMAZON'S STREAMING GAINS

Amazon Music Unlimited has gained 2% marketshare in the streaming race since last the week of 9/29. We analyzed the top 25k streamed songs at each of the top five accounts, and found that in the last six months, the e-tail giant's service has not only remained the #3 streamery but has moved up from 6-8% marketshare. It was the only service to make an appreciable gain in share during that interval. One likely contributor: the advent of voice-activated gizmo Echo, which became available for the Christmas rush.

Spotify, at around 64% at the end of September, was at 62% the week of 2/23; the Swedish firm, which just announced it has reached the benchmark of 50 million subscribers, remains the 800-lb. gorilla of the platform. Apple Music has remained steady at about 25%.Google Play Music (the audio service, not YouTube) has stuck around 4%, and Tidal at 1%.

Perhaps most notably for the biz as a whole, the 25k songs from each account collectively increased to about 4.5 billion total streams, up almost a billion from 3.6b the week of 9/29.