How We Spend Money On Music Is Changing

93% of the US population listens to music, spending an average of 25 hours a week listening to their favorite songs, according to Nielsen's Music 360 Report.

That said, 2014 provided a paradigm shift in how we consume music, as streaming has now become the preferred method.

In fact, 67% of music fans tap into streaming music on any given week.
Indeed, we streamed more than 164 billion tracks last year alone.

That said, Americans spend an average of $109 a year on music, and you'd be surprised how we spend it.

As you can see from the chart on the left, the majority of the money is spend buying live music tickets, and the next largest sum is buying CDs!

That's followed by buying music gift cards for others, and tickets to music festivals. Paid online streaming is almost last, which means there's big room for growth in the future.

Keeping The Cannibal Away: The 3 Biggest Issues Facing The Upcoming YouTube Streaming Service

There’s been a lot of rumblings from Googleland again about the new YouTube streaming service that it’s preparing to introduce, with most of more recent ones being about how Google is struggling with getting everything just right before it launches. There’s good reason for the company to be so cautious as there’s a lot riding on the decisions that are being made right now, at least in the music sphere.

The launch of the new YouTube streaming service has actually been speculated for months, and if I didn’t actually know people who have seen it for themselves, it might be easy to think of the launch whispers as a just a diversion to throw off the competition, a nice rumor to scare the pants off of Spotify, Pandora and Beats Music. That said, all indications are that the service is being crafted to be a serious contender in the music streaming space, but the fact of the matter is that there are three major issues facing Google here, and none of them trivial.

The biggest question is how to top something that’s doing so well already under its own momentum. YouTube is already the largest music discovery engine online, beating all competitors by a large margin, according to Nielson’s Music 360 Report. You don’t hear a lot of complaints or “if only it did” comments from its users, as most are quite content with the on-demand access that they have now. Oh, and it’s free too. How do you surpass that without becoming just another service groveling for some of Pandora or Spotify’s marketshare?

By delivering picture along with the audio, that’s how, which raises the second question of how Google gets around delivering that picture without it resembling a late night at a Karaoke bar. Word has it that the company is looking into licensing different types of artwork to play behind the music; some static and some dynamic. Ideally the graphics would have at least something to do with the artist, but many videos today get by just fine with abstract graphic designs. Read more on Forbes.