What is impact of the Coronavirus on music streaming services?
We show the case of Primephonic, the streaming service for classical music.
There’s no escaping from the fact that COVID-19 is affecting many people in most parts of the world. As social distancing and staying in become the new normal for most of us, we’re faced with the question of how to fill our free time without leaving the house.
As well as adapting our professional lives for home working for at least several weeks, we also face the challenge of entertaining ourselves in our leisure time.
It’s unlikely that anyone believes services like Netflix, Spotify or Primephonic aren’t seeing more traffic in recent days. Streaming apps are a great ally in these strange times, not only for entertainment in the evenings and weekends but in the case of music streaming apps, to aid concentration during the workday.
Primephonic’s case
Primephonic is a streaming service designed exclusively for classical music, containing 3.5 million tracks in the highest audio quality. Many users listen for entertainment, some to learn and others as background to their daily activities.
So let’s go to the analysis!
How are quarantine, self-isolation and social-distancing affecting streaming figures?
Listening time
We analysed the average listening time per user over the last six weeks. The United States have been badly affected by the pandemic, so we took a sample of subscribed users based in US.
We suspected that the more time people spent at home, trying to unwind, or indeed concentrate, the more time they would spend using Primephonic. This was confirmed, and we can see it in the following graph:
In the most recent days, we see the increase of minutes played per user, since the quarantine and lock down are getting more strict and people are becoming more conscious about it.
Save music to Offline
Let’s look at other features. As the leading classical music streaming service, Primephonic offers the option of downloading music for offline listening. Take a look at the recent usage of this feature:
We can see that in recent days the usage of this feature decreased. This makes sense as people are now spending more time at home where there’s wifi, and don’t need to download albums or playlists for listening on the go.
Times of the day — Can we see a change of routine?
The next graph shows the total number of sessions that occurred in each hour of the day during one week in early February (pre-pandemic) and one week in mid-March after the situation in France changed rapidly.
Are there any significant changes?
The blue bars show the total number of sessions before Covid-19 changed daily life, and the orange bars show those after.
We can see many things:
- People’s routines have changed. In early February listeners were logging more sessions in the morning, coinciding with waking up, preparing for the day and eating breakfast. We assume that many people also listen on their commute, either on public transport or via in-car streaming, one of Primephonic’s newest features.
- During the period of quarantine, it seems that in general, people are waking up later, but listening more throughout the day. Listeners are enjoying music throughout their workday, as well as during lunch hour.
- It’s clear that before Italy went into lockdown, that pre and post-work hours were the most popular times to listen. It seems that classical music is part of many people’s daily routine, a wholesome habit that they will return to once we have all returned to our usual work routines. Maybe some people will continue to listen to classical music between 09:00 and 17:00 when they return to a shared workspace, and headphone sales will increase!
- A final and interesting insight: More people are listening in the small hours. At 03:00, there are more than double the amount of listening sessions than in the previous period (look back into the graph). Maybe anxiety and worry are playing a part, maybe those who suffer from insomnia are feeling it more keenly as their routines change. Perhaps they are turning to Primephonic’s ‘Sleep’ or ‘Keep Calm’ playlists for solace at this time.
Here’s the link for the Mood Playlists if you want to check it out!
(*) For data protection and privacy reasons, numbers are hidden from the graph’s left axis.
Final Thoughts
The new normal of staying at home poses a great opportunity to connect with past passions or discover new ones. At Primephonic, we have already seen that more people are using our service more often, which makes us happy. We are delighted to be able to offer some comfort during this difficult time.
We are devastated at the widespread closures of concert halls and opera houses and the continuing cancellation of live performances around the world. We want to help both artists and audiences continue to create and enjoy this wonderful art form. #LetsKeepTheMusicPlaying
About Primephonic
We are a continuously growing Startup that was founded as a direct response to the urgent challenges and opportunities existing within the classical music industry.
Our ambition is to reach the under-served classical music listener with an extensive classical music catalog, high quality audio, and industry-leading search technology while solving the streaming audio value gap negatively affecting artists and labels today.
By working collaboratively with classical music artists, artist managers, labels, and arts presenters from a shared value business perspective, Primephonic seeks to reinvent the digital classical music experience and reignite a global passion for the genre.
Check here the Primephonic Web Player!
Thanks for reading!
