Previously...
On a post I made last week, I shared the results from a few polls I did which asked you a question, "Which platform is your go to for listening to music?" It was mainly out of curiosity to see if I was on the right lines of where I share my music and which sites are best suited but I didn't hear from the legends that follow me on Hive, which has basically replaced my Facebook page as a music producer.
So I popped up a poll so that those on Hive could vote on as well and have now updated the results from last week. Actually, some pretty interesting changes came about but first, want a stats table and a pie chart? Thought so!
Updated Results with Hive Poll
There are now a total of 219 votes across the 4 polls with just those who voted on the Hive poll (not including any additional comments) taken in to consideration.
Discussion
Spotify Still On Top But...
Spotify still dominates the poll but it's share of the votes was eaten up by a substantial 7% after the followers on Hive mainly opted for other platforms. Spotify was only the 3rd favourite after the results were tallied, losing out to YouTube and Soundcloud.
Although it still received some votes, it seemed that those who voted for Spotify still gave the same reasons for choosing it based on convenience of app and finding music that the listener would like too.
YouTube Takes 2nd Place
Now this was a surprise to see YouTube break out in to 2nd place and the way it totally dominated the Hive poll. I'd never have considered YouTube a place where one would go to listen to music, especially when I think of it more as a place for people to upload videos. Then, what is a video without music to accompany it?
Also add in to that the search algorithms on YouTube helped by being a part of Google and with its 2 billion users to contribute content and upload music to... yeah, can see why a few more people would use it to find music than I originally thought! Thankfully, on a personal level, the distributor we use for Electronic Alliance Records publishes our releases to YouTube too so we're good there!
Soundcloud Completes The Podium
Soundcloud has had an interesting history since it first came about and I do admit that it was where my heart and soul was, particularly before they added the "repost" feature as I heard music from those I wanted to hear from and they had conversation boxes on the tracks that appeared so you could see a thread easily. They took all the social side out when they removed that and added repost and my feed was cluttered. Add to that the bot fest that it turned in to and I think a few music producers became disgruntled.
But, after seeing the Hive results, seemed that people that go there to listen to music find it very convenient and to be honest, I do agree that it is pretty convenient to listen to music, you can find gems there that won't be on Spotify, it's a little bit more social in the sense that you can add comments, give away free downloads and embed its player that will play the full track, regardless of whether you're logged in, unlike Spotify. With this, it's no surprise that Soundcloud consolidated 3rd place in this poll.
Bandcamp
Worth a mention and interesting to note that there really wasn't much of an interest from the folks on Hive about Bandcamp. As I commented from my findings in the previous post:
I looked at each profile of those who commented about Bandcamp and it seems that every one was a musician so it would have been good to see if non-musicians find this site as good to listen to music.
This suggests to me that musicians prefer Bandcamp as it offers a bit of a fairer deal due to it not taking as much of a cut and offering a store for musicians to place their music on who may not be able to host one on their own website.
As for the non-musicians' thoughts on Bandcamp, the jury is still out but having spoken to a lot of those who voted for the top 3 sites, I think Bandcamp will remain on the outskirts as more of a place for people to buy merchandise rather than listen to and find new music.
The Others
Again, Apple Music didn't really get a look in here and along with the others, only made up 3% of the votes received across all polls with slim pickings for Mixcloud, Internet Radio, Pandora, TIDAL, Amazon Prime and Emanate, which all only picked up 7% of the total votes between them.
Cryptocurrency Sites Have a Long Way To Go... Still
Despite Hive followers being more attuned to cryptocurrency, there were only a handful of votes that landed on some of the crypto sites that are out there at the moment. Let's quickly review them.
Emanate, which is looking to be a music streaming platform rewarding musicians (at the moment) for their music streams, is still very new and is under huge developments right now but has got backing from a few big names in the music industry such as Mau5trap and ATTLAS - one to keep an eye on.
Dsound has been around for a couple of years and is a like a cross between Soundcloud and a blog with listeners being able to ❤️ a track they like (which has a small monetary value). However, questions remain about whether development is continuing with only 2 updates in 14 months and the size of user base and variety of music.
DTube and 3Speak are a bit like YouTube in that users can upload music videos or import them from YouTube itself where users can give it a like 👍 which again, has a monetary value. 3Speak in particular advertises that it will never censor or remove people's accounts/videos (unless it's an illegal video or goes against their ToS).
However, despite picking up a few votes in the poll, there's a long way to go for these blockchain/crypto currency based sites to become recognised names and start competing with the more mainstream ones as "go to" sites for listening to music.
Hive Replaced My Facebook Page
It's true, I pretty much ditched my FB page (although I still have it in case that 1 person FB shows my posts to out of 12,000 "followers" wants to find out the latest at Havey HQ) because there's no interaction and they ask me to pay to show my posts to followers who liked the page... seems pretty broken!
One of the reasons is because I can share my music via Spotify, Soundcloud or YouTube there and those who enjoy it give the post a like 👍 or ❤️ (which has a small monetary value). What's more is, they also comment, which I can give a like 👍 or ❤️ back to say "thanks for being a legend" and the whole thing has a positive spiral.
It is this process that some have even bought my music with Hive tokens with, which is possible just from commenting on posts so there's a ton of potential but I'll talk about this more in another blog as I'm thinking of reigniting the Bluffer's Guide again. Check out this tweet below:
Conclusion
Well, it seems that Spotify is still king despite losing ground after hearing from the Hive folks but YouTube is a clear second favourite. Obviously to be taken with a slight pinch of salt as we have only heard from 219 out of the hundreds of millions, even billions, of people's listening habits but will be keeping these results and ask the same question in the future to see how the landscape has changed
Thanks to everyone who got involved with the polls - good fun wasn't it!
Catch you soon
Nicky
Thanks to @steempress for developing the WordPress plugin, which helps connect bloggers to the blockchain. If you'd like to add the plugin to your WordPress site, click here to get started.