38 Million Tracks on Streaming Services Were Never Played in 2022
A new study has revealed that 38 million audio tracks on various streaming platforms in 2022 received zero plays.
Music industry website Music Business Worldwide highlighted a statistic from Luminate, an entertainment tracking service, that 158 million audio tracks were streamed on various DSPs like Apple Music and Spotify in 2022. Shockingly, 38 million tracks on those platforms received zero plays last year. That means Zip. Nada. Nil.
According to MBW, which published a report on March 23, 2023, Rob Jonas, CEO of Luminate, delivered a presentation at SXSW in Texas last month outlining streams over the past year. According to his slideshow presentation (see below), 158 million audio tracks were sitting on DSPs and only 42 percent (67.1 million audio tracks) garnered 10 or fewer streams apiece, worldwide. Only 24 percent (38 million audio tracks) received not one stream, not even a click. (You can listen to Rob Jonas’ SXSW presentation here.)
38 million songs on music streaming services received a zero click in 2022.
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This prompted music executive Ray Daniels to ask the question, “How is this possible”?
“I need artist to help this make sense,” he wrote on his Instagram account. “You gotta have a friend[,] a momma[,] or a cousin. Someone who’ll give it one listen. How does this happen?! Do the math. That’s 104k songs uploaded a day that not one person listened [to]. How is this possible?!?”
Fans are also posing the same question on social media. However, some people have suggested that artists simply don’t know how to promote their music properly, while others believe discerning listeners are not clicking the play button on crappy music.
“Looks like the producers forgot to do the last step: promote your music [tears of joy emoji],” tweeted one person.
“How sad tbh. People put so much work into their art,” wrote a concerning fan.
A third person added: “Creators of great content are not going through the proper marketing channels.”
What do you think?