what MIDiA’s stats say concerning the business

Nothing signifies the vacation season like snowy days, Christmas jingles – and for many people, Spotify Wrapped. The streaming platform’s annual listenership stats are again, and so is MIDiA’s custom of over-analysing them. For the third 12 months in a row, we’re sharing MIDiA workers members’ personal Wrapped information, and analysing what it’d say concerning the state of music in the present day.

In fact, this comes with the same old disclaimers. MIDiA’s workers of leisure analysts are removed from common customers, and our pattern dimension is much from important. A complete of 13 beneficiant members of our workers – plus 4 family and friends members to assist spherical out the pattern – contributed their information to this 12 months’s evaluation. Nonetheless, our stats have tended to replicate broader developments taking form within the business. Listed below are our 5 greatest takeaways from Spotify Wrapped this 12 months. 

1. We spent much less time on Spotify in 2025 – and extra on YouTube

Of the 9 members of our pattern who contributed their Wrapped figures in each 2024 and 2025, all however one noticed their complete listening time fall – and by a mean of -25.1%. Almost all of them stated extra of their music listening has migrated to YouTube within the final 12 months, the place they’re usually tuning in to DJ units.

Most digital platforms, from Spotify to Netflix, see YouTube as a key competitor within the consideration economic system. But music streaming providers usually fear about dropping consideration to YouTube content material creators and podcasters – much less so, YouTube DJs. If extra listeners are like us, then Spotify’s current addition of music movies could solely resolve a part of its competitors drawback.

2. Our favorite artists obtain a slim minority of our listening time

The common member of our pattern spent simply 4.2% of their complete listening time on their high artist. Let that sink in: the artists we get pleasure from essentially the most obtain a tiny minority of our listening time. In truth, the typical member of our pattern listened to 2,728 songs from 1,488 artists in 2025. This complicates rightsholders’ deal with superfans – who may disproportionately drive live performance ticket and merch gross sales, however at the moment appear to make a lot much less of a distinction in terms of stream share.

Furthermore, this listening time positioned our common pattern member in essentially the most devoted 1% of their high artists’ listeners, that means that by contributing simply 4.2% of their consideration on common, they’re nonetheless providing greater than 99% of listeners do.

So as to add one other layer, the typical high tune in our pattern acquired 55 performs over all the 12 months. If we assume a tune size of three minutes, this is able to entail that the typical pattern member’s favorite tune of the 12 months contributed simply 0.4% of their complete music streaming time. No marvel even superstars groan about professional rata streaming economics. The paradox of the trendy music business is as soon as once more made clear: It’s simpler than ever for artists to get listened to as soon as, however tougher than ever to attain significant repeat listening.

3. It’s a singles world – however the album isn’t useless but

The common member of our pattern spent 642 minutes on their “high” album, representing simply 1.7% of complete annual listening time. We did not want these stats to inform us that streaming is a singles world – however a minimum of at MIDiA, we’ve not but hung up the album format for good. The common pattern member listened to twenty-eight albums in 2025, averaging 2.3 albums per 30 days (a person should take heed to a minimum of 70% of an album for it to depend in direction of this complete, in accordance with Spotify). Some contributors even talked about that their Spotify listening hours have gone down barely as a result of they’re listening to extra vinyl information. 

4. Podcasts are eroding music streaming time

For our crew, music time dwarfed podcast time total. Common complete time spent listening to podcasts (1,042 minutes) was simply 2.8% of common complete time spent listening to music (37,229 minutes). MIDiA shopper survey information helps clear up the worldwide image. Whereas podcasts are catching as much as music streaming by month-to-month energetic and weekly energetic customers, podcasts are a lot additional behind in terms of every day energetic customers. This displays the codecs themselves – with music far more background-able, it’s simpler to think about streaming music all day lengthy than to do the identical with podcasts. 

Nevertheless, this doesn’t imply podcasts don’t have an effect on music streaming time. Multiply these measly 1,042 minutes by Spotify’s 281 million premium subscribers, and you’d get 557,081 years (greater than 5,000 centuries!) value of listening to podcasts that may have gone to music as an alternative. Not solely do podcasts now compete for streams – in addition they compete with ad-supported music streaming for advert spend. For extra on this, look out for MIDiA’s ad-supported streaming market shares report, coming later this month. 

5. Age is however a quantity

As if the music business wanted any additional affirmation that catalogue dominates listening, this 12 months’s Wrapped included a “listening age”, estimating the age customers could be in the event that they grew up listening to the music they take heed to now. The overwhelming majority of our pattern members had a “listening age” above their precise age. In lots of circumstances, the distinction was large, with a number of Gen Z and millennials scoring listening ages within the 70s and 80s. Right now, the “new launch” label is dropping significance, as any music could be “new” as long as it’s new to the person.

For extra Wrapped evaluation, try our MIDiA Wrapped weblog editions from 2024 and 2023. In the event you’re curious to know what made up our listening this 12 months, amongst our Wrapped albums of 2025 had been Identical Day Cleansing by Sammy Virji, Submarine by The Marias, West Finish Lady by Lily Allen, Snog by The Popguns, and I Barely Know Her by sombr. Amongst our high Wrapped artists had been Olivia Dean, TOMORROW X TOGETHER, Vapour Path, The Rolling Stones, and João Gilberto.