Spotify has the most users among digital audio platforms, followed by Pandora, Amazon Music, and Apple Music. Amazon will surpass Pandora in listeners next year.

Spotify is the market leader in US audio subscriptions, followed by Apple Music, YouTube Premium, and Pandora. We don’t have visibility into how many people pay for Amazon’s music service independent of Prime access, but we expect Amazon to also be a major player in this space.

Currently Spotify has the largest share of subscription revenues as Apple, Amazon, and Google all continue to build out their audio businesses. The number of paid audio subscribers has been increasing in the US. That figure will reach 121.9 million by year-end 2021, for an 11.2% increase over 2020.

Amazon Music launched as Amazon MP3 in 2007, starting out as a download store and eventually pivoting into subscription-based streaming. Amazon has been in the music market for roughly as long as its main competitors: Apple (2003) and Spotify (2006).

iHeartRadio is the most popular US podcast publisher, with 30.0 million people tuning in to its podcasts in September.

Considering Spotify now captures more of the podcast market, and that Apple only allows for baked-in, host-read ads on podcasts, Spotify is responsible for the lion’s share of that growth. What’s next? Per our forecasts, podcast listeners will keep rising steadily, and Spotify’s share of those listeners will keep pace.

Time spent with digital audio has increased thanks to the emergence of streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, Stingray, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and Radioplayer Canada, which have expanded the digital listening menu. YouTube is also a go-to platform for podcasts.

Spotify and Apple stand out in their ability amass large podcast audiences. This year, Spotify will surpass Apple in podcast listeners: 28.2 million US internet users will consume podcasts monthly on Spotify, compared with 28.0 million who will do so on Apple Podcasts. Spotify’s lead will only grow in the coming years.

Apple Music listeners account for 30.3%, and YouTube Premium subscribers make up 19.4%. Pandora Premium patrons make up a significantly smaller slice of the subscription audio pie at just 5.4%. Looking ahead: We project that, while the rate of growth will continue to slow, over 130 million people in the US will subscribe to paid audio in 2023.

One tactic Apple is using to bring more users to its media products is bundling them together. In September, Apple announced that users could purchase Apple TV+, Apple Music, Apple News+, Apple Fitness+, Apple Arcade, and iCloud under a single plan called Apple One.

Apple Music doesn’t have ads while Amazon Music, Google Play, Pandora, and Spotify offer ad-free subscription tiers in addition to their ad-supported offerings. In a February 2020 survey of 3,159 US consumers conducted by Edison and audio ad tech firm Triton Digital, paid ad-free subscription tiers were used by 45% of Spotify users, 21% of Pandora users, and 31% of Google Play Music users.

Digital audio consumption includes listening to music, podcasts, or other audio content via internet-based audio streaming services within an app or website. That includes services like Apple Music or Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Pandora. It also includes listening to podcasts the user downloads, though excludes other downloaded audio files like music MP3s.

That ranks well ahead of other services such as Apple Music (13%), Google Play Music (11%), SoundCloud (10%), iHeartRadio (7%) and Amazon Music (7%). Homegrown services like Stingray (9%), CBC Music (7%) and RadioPlayer Canada (5%) also commanded some slice of listenership.