How much music are we actually listening to?

by Chase Kanger: Brightonian Staff

Ever since streaming has overthrown the CD, it has been the easiest, cheapest, and most prominent source to listen to your favorite artists. However, between Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora, and Amazon Music, how often would we need to be listening in order to outweigh the month to month cost?

Taking into consideration, I’ll only be listing the single user cost for all of these services. Apple Music, Spotify Premium, Pandora Premium, and Amazon Music (excluding an Amazon Prime membership where it costs $7.99 a month), all cost $9.99 a month. Being subscribed to one of these services would cost you $119.88 per year. This is significantly cheaper and more logical than purchasing CDs and vinyls, due to the ability to download/stream millions of albums without having to pay for them individually. The average price of a CD album is $12.87, and the average price of a vinyl album is $23.86.

The answer to the previous question of how much we would need listen to outweigh the monthly cost is approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes. The average duration of a single album. That is how far we have come in the music industry.

Studies show that the average American listened to about 23.5 hours of music per week. In 2016, during the very beginning of the dawn of the streaming age, the average American listened to about 26.6 hours per week. To top it all off, the standing average as of 2019 has experienced an increase of 8.5 hours, which is 32 hours per week. That’s the medically recommended standard for full night’s rest.

Is our average going to continuously increase due to how easy it is to listen anywhere at any time. All sources point to this being a very realistic possibility.