If the worldwide music streaming financial system is a race, Amazon Music sat down someplace across the begin of 2024, and hasn’t gotten again up once more.
In line with the newest stats from Midia Analysis, Amazon’s world market share of paying music subscribers (by quantity) on the shut of final 12 months was simply 8.5%.
This, in flip, implies that Amazon’s complete music subscriber base stood at 78.3 million. That quantity wasn’t simply down year-over-year by way of market share – it was down in actual phrases.
Midia’s 2020–2025 numbers (obtain right here) recommend that Amazon misplaced round 400,000 world subscribers in 2025, regardless of the general world market rising by 84.3 million subscribers.
In the identical 12 months – and in stark distinction to Amazon Music’s decline – Spotify added 27 million subs.
2025 was the newest low level in an ongoing droop for Amazon, whose music subscriber base, per Midia’s numbers, has remained flat, or down, for 2 years straight.
As you may see above, Midia’s world figures embody the main music streaming suppliers in two areas – China and Russia – the place world DSPs don’t are inclined to function. (Apple Music is lively in China, for instance, however Amazon, Spotify, and YouTube usually are not.)
It’s subsequently price inspecting how the information adjustments when you take away the dominant DSPs in these markets (Yandex Music in Russia; Tencent Music and NetEase Cloud Music in China).
Doing so provides us a clearer image of music streaming’s aggressive dynamic throughout these world areas – i.e., in every single place exterior China/Russia – the place the ‘huge weapons’ (Spotify, Amazon, Apple, YouTube) are competing head-to-head.
The outcomes would possibly shock you.
They present that Spotify and YouTube have loved an astonishing rise in market share over the previous half-decade. For Amazon Music and Apple Music, nevertheless, the proof is miserable.
Strip out the main Chinese language and Russian DSPs, and Midia’s numbers recommend that Spotify gained almost 4 share factors of market share within the 2020–2025 interval.
YouTube Music (bundled with YouTube Premium) noticed an much more spectacular leap: up greater than seven full share factors from 9.5% in This fall 2020 to 16.8% in This fall 2025 (once more, with the Chinese language and Russian giants stripped out).
However simply take a look at the collapse of Apple and Amazon: Apple, down 5 full share factors (2020–2025) – Amazon, down simply over three share factors.
In essence, the eight mixed factors of market share misplaced by Apple Music and Amazon Music throughout this era have been stolen by Spotify and/or YouTube Music – who’ve then devoured some extra market share from smaller opponents.
Apple and Amazon would little question level to YouTube and Spotify’s apparent benefit in music streaming, notably in high-potential world markets: they every function a kind of ‘free’ tier, and might upsell customers into subscription from that base.
But there have been greater than 2.5 billion lively Apple units on this planet on the shut of final 12 months, however solely round 116 million Apple Music subscribers (per Midia’s figures).
In the meantime, Amazon boasts 250 million paying Prime clients globally, and a few 310 million lively customers.
Is the race already over for Amazon Music – and does its guardian firm truly care?
These findings clearly level to tough questions for Apple Music, the place a considerable shift in technique could also be required if it’s to have any hope of successfully competing with Spotify and YouTube Music.
In line with my learn of Midia’s numbers, Apple Music gained round 5.6 million subscribers in 2025, a slight acceleration on the 4.9 million improve seen in 2024. Apple’s subscriber base is nudging upward – however its market share is in freefall.
For Amazon Music, nevertheless, issues are extra existential. Per Midia’s knowledge, it’s shedding subs in actual phrases, and that world market share of 8.5% (and declining) appears at risk of sinking beneath the ‘also-ran’ threshold of 5% quickly sufficient.
What’s extra, its guardian firm hardly appears to prioritize Amazon Music in any respect.
Simply take a peek at what number of Amazon press releases have talked about Amazon Music thus far this 12 months.
In line with the agency’s official US press web site, there have been a grand complete of three. Two concern Latin music stay streams carried on Amazon Prime Video; the opposite proclaims a podcast from Oprah Winfrey.
Additional proof of Amazon’s disinterest at a company degree is there if you happen to search for it.
I’ve reviewed transcripts of Amazon’s quarterly earnings calls over the previous few years to tally mentions of/references to Amazon Music, Amazon Music Limitless, or Amazon Music Prime.
Again in FY 2018, Amazon’s higher-ups had been boasting of “tens of thousands and thousands of paid clients” for Amazon Music, whereas suggesting that Amazon Music Limitless was “develop[ing] in a short time.”
Within the years since, these providers have gotten far much less company consideration, with latest earnings name mentions of “music” usually referring to person habits on Alexa.
Thus far in FY 2026, two earnings calls deep, the likes of Amazon CEO Andrew Jassy, and Investor Relations head Dave Fildes, have made zero point out of Amazon Music.
Certainly, the final solitary point out got here in Could 2025, as Jassy reeled off a protracted checklist of platforms on which Amazon’s advert gross sales crew may flog stock.
The priorities of Amazon’s company leaders clearly level elsewhere – notably towards financial alternatives that don’t at all times tessellate with the music trade’s worldview.
Essentially the most in depth latest point out of “music” on Amazon earnings calls got here in February 2026 (This fall 2025), when Jassy beamed that Amazon Net Providers (AWS) was booming, largely because of demand from AI.
AWS gross sales development, he famous, had accelerated to 24% YoY, representing a “$142 billion annualized run price enterprise.”
Pressed for case research examples of AWS’s success, Jassy acknowledged: “Suno is a very cool instance of an AWS buyer that’s form of reinvented how one can write music and construct music.”
“Suno is a very cool instance of an AWS buyer that’s form of reinvented how one can write music and construct music.”
Andrew Jassy, Amazon, February 2026
Suno, in fact, continues to be sued for alleged mass copyright infringement by Amazon Music’s two largest rightsholder companions, Sony Music Leisure and Common Music Group.
Elsewhere, Common (amongst others) can also be suing AI behemoth Anthropic, alleging that it illegally mass-ingested tune lyrics to coach Claude’s fashions.
Up to now, Amazon has invested $13 billion in Anthropic, with commitments that would push that determine past $30 billion.
Not fairly burning books – however not precisely ‘safeguarding’ them both
One in all UMG’s key accusations in its Anthropic lawsuit is that, to coach its fashions, the AI agency illegally pirated music on a considerable scale.
Final week, 404 Media blew a comparative state of affairs broad open.
The publication was contacted by a rare-book vendor who had seen sudden bulk orders coming in – at volumes and turnaround speeds unparalleled within the commerce – from nameless patrons.
By hiding an Apple AirTag in a single such cargo – an order for almost 1,000 books – 404 Media traced it to an Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The Amazon crew that runs the operation there’s referred to as VGT3.
Its employees, posting on-line, have spelled out their day by day activity: reducing the binding off these uncommon books, scanning their contents, after which destroying them.
Requested concerning the operation, an Amazon spokesperson mentioned: “Amazon purchases books by way of business channels to assist develop and enhance the services our clients use.”
In follow: Amazon is shopping for massive portions of out-of-print books, slicing off their spines, scanning the free pages for AI coaching knowledge, and throwing away what’s left.
Destroying books isn’t incidental to this course of.
In a June 2025 ruling in Bartz v. Anthropic, District Choose William Alsup discovered that purchasing a print guide, scanning the pages, and discarding the paper authentic amounted to “truthful use” beneath US legislation – exactly as a result of the digital file changed the bodily copy quite than including to it.
Amazon seems to have absorbed the lesson that Anthropic, its $13 billion investee, realized in a California courtroom: to maintain the scan authorized, the guide should meet its finish.
This might be the identical Amazon whose Amazon Music co-issued a press launch with Common Music Group in December 2024, pledging to “work collaboratively to deal with, amongst different issues, illegal AI-generated content material.”
The identical PR, as I’ve talked about earlier than, cited Amazon’s “dedication to advancing and safeguarding human artistry.”Music Enterprise Worldwide
