Music Streaming Hits Major Milestone as 100,000 Songs are Uploaded Daily to Spotify and Other

The number cited by Universal and Warner chiefs represents a huge leap, since the figure for songs being added on a daily basis was reported to be 70,000 just 18 months ago.

Feeling like you’re having a hard time keeping up with all the new music that’s coming out? You’re not alone — even if you are, say, a computer and not just a mere mortal. Stats now show that an average of more than 100,000 songs are being uploaded to digital service providers every day.

So don’t feel bad about not staying on top of things. If each of those 100,000 tunes lasted just three minutes (a conservative estimate by most standards), it would take over 30 years for one person to listen through all of the music released to and through DSPs in a day. New Music Friday? It’s more like New Music Nanosecond.

The 100,000 daily figure was cited by the CEOs for both Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group at industry events in September, according to Music Business Worldwide, which used the staggering number as its Stat of the Week on Thursday.

MBW reports that outgoing WMG CEO Steve Cooper spoke to the implications of that figure at a Goldman Sachs event on Sept. 12, saying, “Today, on any given day of the week, roughly 100,000 tracks of music are uploaded to SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple [and] so on. The complexity of being able to separate one’s music from the other 99,999 tracks uploaded that day is incredibly complex [and] incredibly difficult.”

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For Cooper, there’s a silver lining in that for record labels, as he said he believes artists will come to rely more on what labels can offer to distinguish themselves in an era where the coming of fresh W3 platforms will only make standing out from the crowd more difficult and complex. “Most creators don’t have the capital, the skill levels, [or] the expertise to do all of that and be successful,” Cooper said.

On Sept. 27, UMG’s Sir Lucian Grainge addressed the Music Matters conference in Singapore and repeated the figure, saying 100,000 tracks were being “added to music platforms every day,” per MBW. Like Cooper, Grainge, too, suggested this meant the majors would only become more vital in navigating the enormous traffic (plus “associated content” on social platforms).

This number represents radical growth, as MBW points out that it was only 18 months ago that the number of new tracks being uploaded daily to DSPs was a mere 60,000. That figure came from Spotify back in the relatively less congested days of February 2021. In April 2019, the daily number per Spotify was just roughly 40,000.

As for the overall number of tracks that now sit on DSPs, Apple Music this week announced that it had surpassed 100 million songs available on its service. Two years ago, that number stood at 70 million.

Putting this in context, Rachel Newman, Apple Music‘s global head of editorial, wrote: “Back in the 1960s, only 5,000 new albums were released each year. … Every day, over 20,000 singers and songwriters are delivering new songs to Apple Music — songs that make our catalogue even better than it was the day before. One hundred million songs is evidence of a more democratic space, where anyone, even a new artist making music out of their bedroom, can have the next big hit.”

Apple, of course, positioned itself as offering the solution to trying to find the gold hidden in that 100-million-strong haystack. “With such a huge expanse of songs, we know you need someone there to guide you through. Gone are the days of hitting shuffle on your library: Now it’s on us to help you discover new favorites and rediscover forgotten gems, whether it’s one of our expert radio hosts lighting your path, or a handcrafted playlist.”

Music Business Worldwide noted that neither Grainge nor Cooper cited a specific source for the 100,000-daily figure, but added that we might want to believe them because “they both run publicly-traded companies, so we’re gonna go ahead and do so.”

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Update: 2024-08-12

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