Spotify ‘rock on’ with lead in audio streaming market

These are some of the initial findings from Kantar’s new Entertainment On Demand service launching today in the USA. Entertainment On Demand is the newest offering from Kantar. The service is designed to help the music industry and investors understand the full consumer journey for digital video and music subscription services. Based on a longitudinal panel of 20,000 consumers and boosted by 10,000 consumer interviews each quarter, including at least 2,500 new subscriber interviews

Kantar Entertainment On Demand is delivered by the same team that provides the world’s leading mobile phone manufacturers with global mobile phone purchasing and usage trends. Entertainment On Demand is the only subscription service providing both quarterly installed base and new subscription market share alongside deep analysis on purchase motivations, customer experience, and diagnostics on ‘at-risk subscribers’ as well as guidance on acquisition and retention strategies.

Entertainment On Demand will provide fast, sophisticated and accurate research into behaviors like purchase triggers, post-purchase usage, loyalty and the customer experience, providing clients with a deep understanding of the reasons behind consumer subscription choice. Organizations will be able to use the service to help maximize their subscription sales, increase customer retention rates and refine their marketing strategies. Initially launching in the US in March 2020, Kantar Entertainment On Demand will also be available in the UK, Germany, Australia and Japan in the second half of the year.

Additional findings from the first quarter’s video subscription behaviours in the US reveal:

• Across the industry the service website is the most influential pre-purchase touchpoint, followed by advice from friends and family – emphasising the importance of subscriber advocacy in future growth.  
• For Spotify, Podcast variety and ease of creating personal playlists are significant competitive advantages versus their competitors. Pandora’s discovery algorithm is hotter than any other service.
• Amazon Music leads in value for money perception – but lags in artist variety.
• Amazon Music drives significantly higher usage through Virtual Assistants than Spotify
• Apple Music has a strong reputation for streaming sound quality. 

Dominic Sunnebo, Senior Vice President at Kantar, Worldpanel Division, comments “As we observed in our 2020 Media predictions, the streaming wars are heating up. Entertainment On Demand provides subscription services and investors in the media industry with a new level of insight in to the motivations and habits of subscription service users. At Kantar we are focused on helping providers grow their subscriber base by driving new customer acquisition and improving customer retention by fine tuning the customer experience. Understanding key drivers behind digital behavioural patterns is vital for clients to understand what digitally focussed consumers want, think and do. He continues, “From our US research we can see that with the explosion in the number of digital subscription options available, the customer journey for different digital services is increasingly differentiated.”

Read Cundiff, North American CEO at  Kantar, added “Kantar is the industry standard for understanding and tracking global Smartphone behavior and is the currency for the TV viewing habits in more than 60 countries around the world, as well as being the leading global source of ad spend. This new service expands our expertise in to the subscription market, and will help, major players, market entrants and investors understand the ‘why’ behind the ‘buy’ decision subscribers are making. The launch of this service reflects the rapid expansion in the digital subscription market as well as the changing needs of our existing clients who are expanding from hardware further into service provision.”

Note to editors:

The full quarterly data set will be based on a nationally representative panel of 20,000 consumers and boosted by an additional quarterly survey of 10,000 consumers including 2,500 consumers who have signed up a new service in the past quarter. All data points for the three months to October 2019 are based on pilot survey 2,500 people including 500 new service subscribers.