With millions of people quarantined at their homes, video streaming services like Netflix are seeing record surges in demand. The New York Times reported that Netflix's viewership had surged 28% in the last few weeks. So video streaming is doing great, but what about music?
We explored the data from Spotify's top 200 chart for the UK, which has now had significant social distancing for more than 2 weeks, to see if we could find any clues.
Surprisingly the numbers suggest that music streaming won't be able to bank on a big boost as video did. So far the numbers for the last 2 weeks look pretty much exactly the same. If anything, they might actually show a slight fall in how much people have been listening to Spotify.
The data says a lot about how we use music in 2020. The fall is less surprising when you consider that during more "normal" times, the amount of music streamed on Spotify peaks every Friday, before falling substantially over the weekend -- when most people actually have much more free time.
It suggests that people use music streaming as more of a distraction from boredom, say work or commuting, rather than an out-and-out leisure activity in its own right. Sorry Spotify (and artists), it looks like no coronavirus boost for you.
