The Music Battles

For an art form, the music industry has been quite fiercely competitive. From the Battle of the Bands to the battle of the platforms to the battle of the earpods, a lot of players are aiming for the top post with the determination and resilience of a striving artist. 

But nowhere have the battles been as fierce as in the software and hardware businesses. Recent developments have thrown a monkey wrench into the software platform territory, where long time leader, Spotify, got into deep water with the Joe Rogan podcast episode that cost them $2 billion in valuation. According to The Verge, Spotify has held the lead with a 31% market share, followed by Apple with 15%, Amazon and Tencent with 13% each and YouTube with 8%. But the Rogan incident caused an avalanche of customers to cancel their Spotify accounts and migrate mainly to Apple Music. 

Artist Neil Young withdrew his music from the system in protest and was quickly followed by a bunch of colleagues like Joni Mitchell, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson and others. The artist exodus accelerated customer cancellation requests in such numbers that they brought the system down and Spotify claims it is unable to satisfy all requests. Hashtags like #CancelSpotify, #DeleteSpotify and #ByeSpotify started trending in social media and frustrated customers unable to cancel are furious and more backlash will follow. It is unclear how far the snowball effect will go, but suffice it to say Spotify’s dominant share is largely eroding.

As for the hardware, all the wired and wireless earbuds the music is being heard on, there is less drama but the battle continues to be intense. According to Statista, Apple leads the market with 26.5% market share, followed by Xiaomi with 9.1%, Samsung with 8.8%, Skull Candy with 7.0% and QCY with 4.2%. Apple’s release of the AirPod 3 and the anticipated release of the new AirPod Pros are likely to widen Apple’s lead. However, recent consumer reaction to high prices and loss of the devices are turning many consumers to the old fashioned wired earbuds, which are less prone to loss and come at a fraction of the cost.

The loss factor is no small issue and it is estimated that 1 in 6 consumers lose their wireless devices every year. This has resulted in various accessories, namely earbud pads, popping up on Amazon, Walmart, BestBuy and other physical and online retailers as a solution to keeping your earbuds securely in your ear. Reducing loss of a high ticket item will likely play a role in how the product and related accessories continue to gain popularity.

The global music streaming market is estimated at $21 billion and the earbuds/headphones market at $12 billion. To put it into perspective, the global razor blade market stands at just over $2 billion. The scale in the music industry, and the enhanced tech and innovation surrounding it will no doubt continue to add to the drama. As of now, the clear winner on both areas seems to be the company from Cupertino.