Top Music Apps
More than two out of five consumers say they listen to music online, making it one of the top uses of the internet. In fact, a recent study on how much time is spent with different forms of media shows that people spend around 1.5 hours each day streaming music online.
So, what is the best music streaming service available today? Knowing the top 10 music apps consumers worldwide use to enjoy music helps you understand them better and know where you should place your brand’s marketing efforts to best reach them. Here’s a list of the top music apps ranked by number of active users and time spent on them.
10 most popular music apps by monthly active users
|
Rank (by monthly active users) |
Music app |
|
1 |
Spotify |
|
2 |
YouTube Music |
|
3 |
MX Player |
|
4 |
Shazam |
|
5 |
Mi Music |
|
6 |
JioSaavn |
|
7 |
Wynk |
|
8 |
Amazon Music |
|
9 |
Music |
|
10 |
SoundCloud |
Based on data from a study of the most popular music apps (determined by number of monthly active users), Spotify tops the list. According to the Swedish company’s latest earnings report, as of Q1 2024, it has 615 million active users, marking a 19% increase from the previous year. Spotify isn’t only popular among music listeners. It’s also one of the most popular podcast platforms in the United States, second only to Apple Podcasts.
YouTube Music by Google is second on the list. Google does not report YouTube Music’s active user numbers in its quarterly earnings report. But in an official blog post in February 2024, the company announced it had surpassed 100 million YouTube Music and Premium users worldwide—double the number it had in September 2021. If you’re thinking about marketing on YouTube Music, consider looking into which countries have the most YouTube users.
Third on the list of the top 10 music apps is MX Player, first launched in 2011 before it was acquired by Times Internet in 2018. This is followed by Apple’s Shazam and Mi Music by Xiaomi, which round out the list of the top 5 music apps.
JioSaavn, a music app owned by India’s Reliance Industries (one of the top ecommerce companies worldwide), follows in sixth place. Despite its relatively recent launch (in 2015), the music streaming app Wynk ranks next. The app is owned by Bharti Airtel Limited, one of India’s leading telecommunication companies.
Eighth on the list is Amazon Music. A report from 2022 suggests it had around 52.6 million users in the United States alone. Hong Kong-based AllSaints Music Group’s app Music follows in ninth place, and SoundCloud completes the list of the best music streaming services ranked by number of users.
Top music apps: ranked by total time spent
|
Rank (by total time spent) |
Music app |
|
1 |
MX Player |
|
2 |
Spotify |
|
3 |
YouTube Music |
|
4 |
GoTube |
|
5 |
Lark Player |
|
6 |
Samsung Music |
|
7 |
Mi Music |
|
8 |
Pocket FM |
|
9 |
Music Player |
|
10 |
Amazon Music |
The list of the top music apps ranked by total time spent doesn’t look all that different from the rankings of the best music streaming services by number of users. The most notable difference is the top-ranked music app; instead of Spotify, it's MX Player. Interestingly, the first three apps are the same on both lists, albeit in a different order.
Additionally, five music apps make it onto the ranking based on total time spent but are absent from the list of top music apps by number of users. These are GoTube, Lark Player, Samsung Music, Pocket FM, and Music Player.