Mass Streaming - YouTube vs Spotify: which is better?

    I was just explaining why the numbers on YouTube are bigger. It’s not because of any kind of filtering system it’s because there are actually significantly more people using YouTube than Spotify

    Quote from Cold_Wave

    youtube dwarfs spotify. its true

    5866.jpeg

    Data from 2016? Really?


    Spotify has now 320 million users


    And Spotify users are more active streaming music because it's a music service

    YouTube userbase are streaming general video content, not only music


    To illustrate it: https://kworb.net/youtube/

    https://spotifycharts.com/regional


    From the position 20 onwards the difference from Spotify and YT streams is not even 10% despite YT being free and available everywhere unlike Spotify


    That's because Spotify userbase are REALLY music customers

    Meanwhile YT userbase is not entirely composed of music listeners, rather composed of people watching content and sometimes listening music


    Of course, in some markets Spotify is more recent (India, SEA) as well people has smaller incomes so a free service is more likely to have higher streams, but absolutely nothing on this justify a song making a dozen more streams on YB than on Spotify except by fans zombie streaming a video in the first days

    youtube currently has 2 billion active monthly users while spotify has 300M so yeah its way more.

    the amount of plays normal songs get on youtube compared to on spotify isnt that different but brand new, high budget MVs from artists with a lot of hype are obviously going to get way more. anyone curious about a new release is way more likely to watch the song on youtube instead of just listening to the song on spotify. thats how bts and bp get so many views, it isnt just the fandom that are watching a lot of other people are too. fandom streaming plays a part but it only gets you so far. thats why artists like exo, 17 and nct don't get so much. theres not much interest outside of their fandoms.

    Achievements are still better than income from streaming platforms. For a small act I get why income from streaming matters but for big acts, the income from streaming barely adds up to their overall profits.

    It’s the touring, album and song sales that pulls in the income for them

    You can only earn enough from streaming platforms when you collect huge amount of streams in the first place, which isn’t all that great for kpop as a whole as they are barely getting over 1 million streams per day for most groups

    Quote from Cold_Wave

    youtube currently has 2 billion active monthly users while spotify has 300M so yeah its way more.

    the amount of plays normal songs get on youtube compared to on spotify isnt that different but brand new, high budget MVs from artists with a lot of hype are obviously going to get way more. anyone curious about a new release is way more likely to watch the song on youtube instead of just listening to the song on spotify. thats how bts and bp get so many views, it isnt just the fandom that are watching a lot of other people are too. fandom streaming plays a part but it only gets you so far. thats why artists like exo, 17 and nct don't get so much. theres not much interest outside of their fandoms.

    Of course EXO Seventeen and so on get much


    YouTube streams lead over Spotify are consistent across the board for every big kpop group. You are basically saying those groups who can score 10 million YB 24h views but not even 1.5 million Spotify views aren't being benefited by fandom streaming?


    This supposed highly anticipation you are commenting suddenly vanish after the very first days, this is not how music charts usually works. If the anticipation was really high the MVs would still getting very high views for some days, kpop MVs drops like literal rocks and one week later they are moving barely 10% of what they did in first day


    So either:

    - Every kpop top group MV is highly anticipated and then 90% of people hates every kpop song released and that's how TB views plummeted

    - Every kpop top group MV has their fandom streaming day and night during the first days, as this kind of habit is just no sustainable for long time run the views drop really fast


    I'm just much more inclined to the second answer

    Quote from Afriyieau1

    Achievements are still better than income from streaming platforms. For a small act I get why income from streaming matters but for big acts, the income from streaming barely adds up to their overall profits.

    It’s the touring, album and song sales that pulls in the income for them

    You can only earn enough from streaming platforms when you collect huge amount of streams in the first place, which isn’t all that great for kpop as a whole as they are barely getting over 1 million streams per day for most groups

    Income from streaming platforms is not that irrelevant. In 2020, BTS made 4.7B streams = $16.9M and Blackpink made 2.25B streams = $8.1M (using the $0.0036 per stream ratio). That's equivalent to a couple hundred thousand album sales. I know both are outliers, but it shows even for big groups it may be a considerable amount of income.


    Dynamite pulled 100M views in 24h on YouTube. If it had been done in Spotify it would've generated $360k instead of only $45k. That's a few tens of thousands of album sales in 24h. If you cross the 200M mark it's $720k. The 300M mark it's $1.08M, and so on...


    Imagine if those 1B views had been pulled on Spotify instead of YouTube? That's $3.6M instead of $450k.

    Quote from omnimorphism

    Income from streaming platforms is not that irrelevant. BTS made 4.7B streams = $16.9M and Blackpink made 2.25B streams = $8.1M (using the $0.0036 per stream ratio). That's equivalent to a couple hundred thousand album sales. I know both are outliers, but it shows even for big groups it may be a considerable amount of income.


    Dynamite pulled 100M views in 24h on YouTube. If it had been done in Spotify it would've generated $360k instead of only $45k. That's a few tens of thousands of album sales in 24h. If you cross the 200M mark it's $720k. The 300M mark it's $1.08M, and so on...


    Imagine if those 1B views had been pulled on Spotify instead of YouTube? That's $3.6M instead of $450k.

    But this is the amount they have accumulated throughout their whole career. I don’t think BTS will have survived on this if this amount was shared over the span of their 7 years. It’s still insignificant compared to their actual profits they pull through merch, tours, album and song sales yearly.

    Quote from Afriyieau1

    But this is the amount they have accumulated throughout their whole career. I don’t think BTS will have survived on this if this amount was shared over the span of their 7 years. It’s still insignificant compared to their actual profits they pull through merch, tours, album and song sales yearly.

    Made in 2020*, sorry, forgot to add this part.

    Quote from omnimorphism

    Income from streaming platforms is not that irrelevant. In 2020, BTS made 4.7B streams = $16.9M and Blackpink made 2.25B streams = $8.1M (using the $0.0036 per stream ratio). That's equivalent to a couple hundred thousand album sales. I know both are outliers, but it shows even for big groups it may be a considerable amount of income.


    Dynamite pulled 100M views in 24h on YouTube. If it had been done in Spotify it would've generated $360k instead of only $45k. That's a few tens of thousands of album sales in 24h. If you cross the 200M mark it's $720k. The 300M mark it's $1.08M, and so on...


    Imagine if those 1B views had been pulled on Spotify instead of YouTube? That's $3.6M instead of $450k.

    You cant use average payment per stream for kpop artists. Spotify payout is related to the price of Spotify subscription in that country, so kpop artists, who get most streams from SEA and Latin America, where the subscription fee is low, get a significantly lower payout per stream.


    Same goes for YT, the payout depends on ad rates.



    And even if we use average Spotify rates, it means BTSs total 15.5 billion streams gets them 55m USD (more likely half of that).

    BH made 280 million USD from album sales in 2020 alone. Its less than 20% of only one year's album sales. Probably more like 10%.



    Streaming is still important, since it generates records, which can be used for media exposure. And it helps with charts, which again help with media exposure.

    Edited 2 times, last by myaza ().

    the reason views fall so much is because the general public/casual fans only watch music videos once or twice even if they like it. its the same thing that happens with movies almost always. opening week has the greatest ticket sales and then theres a steep decline afterwards even if the movie is well liked. that's because opening week is when everyone wants to see it and as time passes more and more people have seen it already and most people even if they enjoyed the movie do not watch it again.

    western pop views arent so front loaded because most songs are not immediately popular and slowly gain popularity through radio, word of mouth, playlisting etc. also MVs are often released after the song is released.

    Quote from Cold_Wave

    the reason views fall so much is because the general public/casual fans only watch music videos once or twice even if they like it.

    ?????


    How do you ever get that idea? people only watch MV one time if they dislike the song and are very likely to listen again EVEN IF THEY HAVEN'T LIKED as long YouTube keep recommending it and the user don't bother blocked the video


    How do you think MVs like Shape of You got 5 billion views? Do you think every YT user watched it twice or even thrice?


    The reason why views of kpop groups drop like rocks is because fans streaming nonstop in the first days but nobody can keep streaming songs for their whole life, people have social lifes and other things to do, once the initial hype is gone fans move away from their zombie streaming habits


    You seems to be really convinced over 80 million people watched Blackpink or BTS MVs in the first day? The most likely number is 10 million people watched them, majority of this 10 million are casuals watching 1/2 times which could make 15-20 million views in first day.


    The bulk of the views however comes from fans streaming 10, 20, 50 times a day. I'm not staying fans are using bots or doing anything illegal, they can do it as long it's not cheating nor harming anybody, but that's how kpop MVs works


    And mind you I'm only talking about fandom streaming let's not start putting paid-ads on this, JYP groups, Everglow, G Idle, even SM groups now are inflating their short-therm views counting

    shape of you is not your average western hit song. it was a super viral global hit song. it got heavy rotation on radio all around the world. it was loved by many people and a song like that i would imagine did get a lot of repeat views from a lot people. but most western hits don't really get that much views like for example rain on me and say so havent even reached 300M views yet.

    im not denying that fandom streaming plays a role im just saying general public/casual fan interest plays a big role too. its like the same thing that happens on korean charts. seventeen/exo have big korean fandoms, more than most girl groups but they can't chart good because the general public isn't interested. same reason why they don't get a lot of views. its not that the fandoms don't care its just they can't

    Quote from Cold_Wave

    shape of you is not your average western hit song. it was a super viral global hit song. it got heavy rotation on radio all around the world. it was loved by many people and a song like that i would imagine did get a lot of repeat views from a lot people. but most western hits don't really get that much views like for example rain on me and say so havent even reached 300M views yet.

    im not denying that fandom streaming plays a role im just saying general public/casual fan interest plays a big role too. its like the same thing that happens on korean charts. seventeen/exo have big korean fandoms, more than most girl groups but they can't chart good because the general public isn't interested. same reason why they don't get a lot of views.


    You see what you are saying? You recognize when a MV or song is well received if get replay value, but by that logic every kpop MV is awfully received because none sustain their beginning impact


    And this is just untrue, many kpop MVs are also discovered slowly. Casual aren't eager to listen the next hot release, they can wait some days even, weeks and this happens fairly often even with big kpop acts


    For instance, BP has MANY casual listeners arguably more than any kpop group and that's the key for BP MVs keeping getting massive views even from songs from 2016. But casuals are helping in the long-range, mass streaming works only short range (first day/week) and those views are highly inflated by fandom activity


    Now back to the thread because we are derailing it too much this discussion:


    I stated my point only to explain why kpop fans will never be able to mass stream on Spotify as they do on YouTube. Mass streaming is tangible on YouTube as long you keep really watching the video, mass streaming on Spotify is not possible because they have a system filled. Hence this thread utterly meaningless as you can't really mass steaming on both platforms

    Streams falling doesn't indicate heavy fandom manipulation because the same thing happens with most songs including ones from artists who don't really mass stream. Take IU - celebrity for example, first day it got 8M views and then within a week it was down to 1M daily views. With your logic either the song wasn't received well or her fandom was heavily manipulating the views. But actually neither of those things are true. The song is a hit and she doesn't have the kind of fandom that mass streams. I've never seen IU fans suggest mass streaming of new releases. What's really happening is a lot of general public/casual fans are checking out the song and MV and regardless whether they like it or not not many of them don't feel compelled to watch more than once or twice. That's what I did too. I liked the song, I liked the MV I just don't feel the need to continuously watch it. I've got a lot of other things to watch and do. IU is just an example the same thing happens with less popular artists just at a smaller scale.

    This isn't just a kpop thing either, same thing happens with a lot of western pop hits. Like "rain on me" got a lot of views initially and then they rapidly declined. 3rd month was less than half what the first month got. With bp/bts MVs their 3rd months are still more than half the first one so its not like this declining streams pattern is more extreme with kpop. Shape of You isn't a good example of what's normal because that was a big global hit song and that type of thing only happens maybe once a year.

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