Instagram has seen significant growth since its launch in 2010, and now boasts more than 400 million active users. The app is one of the most engaging out of the bunch, with users spending a large amount of time scrolling and uploading images and short videos amongst friends . With such market power, brands, marketing companies, and artists alike have taken to the app to connect with their audiences.
Music accounts dominate the top 10 Instagram accounts, with six out of the 10 coming from music artists. The platform didn’t take too long to acknowledge this and decided to create a dedicated account (@music) for exploring music.
With the topic of ‘music’ bubbling on the app, the company decided to partner with Nielson Music to greater understand the behavior of its music listeners, and the results were gripping. The study was based on a pool of more than 3,000 Instagram users.
The data compared the typical annual music expenditure for the U.S. general population and that of an Instagram music fan. Additionally, the study compared the average listening hours for the U.S. general population to the listening hours of both Instagram and social media fans.
The research found that Instagram music fans spent approximately 7 hours on average more listening to music than the general U.S. population, and 3.3 hours more than music fans on other social platforms. The data also exposed that Instagram music fans spent on average $117 more annually than the general U.S. population.
Music genres were also analyzed, and the study found that Instagram music fans favored listening to Pop, Rap, Hip Hop and R&B over Rock, Country and EDM.
Music streaming was also a big focus of the data analysis. The research found that not only are Instagram fans more likely to stream music online, but they are twice as likely to pay for it, which really shows the impact Instagram has on music discovery.
The study also highlighted that a massive 90% of Instagram users stream music on some sort of music streaming platform. Of the 90% that did stream music, they looked into which platforms were used, and found that the most popular service was YouTube, followed by Pandora and Spotify.
Other useful information that the research found was the fact that Instagram music fans are more likely to attend live music events. And when social media is used at live music events, 83% of people are using Instagram, which is more than any other platform used.
The platform is already a working tool in the music industry, especially in terms of marketing. But it will be interesting to see what will be implemented as a result of this newfound information.
(Images from Nielsen’s report, first blogged by Instagram).
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