With Competition Between Streaming Services Intensifying, Hardware Has Become an Important Growth Factor

After a dynamic few years in the music and audio industries, 2018 and the first half of 2019 have once again been marked by the continuous growth of global music streaming subscriptions, with this momentum expected to continue in the short to medium term. By 2023, Futuresource expects the number of streaming subscriptions to exceed 425 million globally, representing over 90% of total consumer spend on recorded music, according to its latest Streaming Music Outlook & Service overview report.

Apparently Apple got it right. Once again. As smart speaker adoption continues to climb, more than half of existing owners would like to have a smart speaker with better sound quality than their current device, while a similar number would pay more for it. That’s one of the findings from the new “Audio Tech Lifestyles” consumer survey from Futuresource Consulting, conducted in the USA, UK, Germany, Japan and China.

Ling Technology, the Chinese company behind the AI Owl Luka, which can read any picture books to children, and the Jibo social robot, is now announcing Auri, a brand new smart home light and smart speaker which aims to promote wellness with its intelligent lighting and ambient sounds to help lift moods and bring calmness into homes. But Auri is also a platform that Ling intends to expand with various accessories, like the Auri oil diffuser and the Auri motion sensor. The project is now being promoted with a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo.

It could be argued that the proliferation of smart speakers in the last 2 years has heralded the biggest evolution of music consumption we have seen since the launch of the iPod, iPhone or even CD. The BPI and ERA held an event in London on Tuesday 20th March 2018, that tackled the smart speaker impact on music consumption. Futuresource was proud to be on the bill, alongside several esteemed industry leaders and experts.

808 Audio, a Voxx International brand, announced availability of its new XL-V speaker featuring Alexa capabilities. Signaling that smart speakers don't necessarily need to come from the voice assistant own brands, such as Amazon, 808 Audio's new XL-V speaker is in fact quite similar to the original Amazon Echo, with a different speaker design and driver arrangement, in a metal packaging that the company says delivers improved quality audio.