The Most Popular Music Streaming Platforms

This article is published in collaboration with Statista

by Valentine Fourreau

According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) recently released Global Music Report 2026, streaming accounted for close to 70 percent of global recorded music income in 2025, representing more than $22 billion. While streaming has imposed itself as the most common way to consume music in recent years, one platform has cornered the market: Spotify. The Swedish platform, launched in 2006, had over 751 million monthly active users as of December 2025, including 290 million paying subscribers. As data from a recent Consumer Insights survey from Statista shows, Spotify was the most commonly used music streaming platform in India, the United Kingdom, Germany and the U.S. in 2025, with between 54 and 77 percent of respondents in those countries reporting they had paid for Spotify in the previous year.

The notable exception is China. Due to censorship and geo-restrictions, it is common for European and American apps not to be available in China, and the country's streaming landscape is dominated by domestic services. As our infographic shows, the most commonly cited music streaming service in China was QQ Music: 56 percent of respondents in the country said they had paid for the platform in the year before the survey. In second position came NetEase (cited by 48 percent of respondents), followed by KuGou (46 percent). In the United States, Spotify (54 percent) was followed by Amazon Music and Apple Music/iTunes (both 41 percent).

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