Companies To Watch As Music Streaming Explodes

2104 marked the first year that consumers swapped buying albums and songs for digital streaming services. Nielsen SoundScan released data earlier in the week showing that US consumers purchased and downloaded 12 percent fewer songs in 2014, but that the use of streaming services increased by 54 percent. Listening to music using online streaming subscriptions was a growing trend that many see continuing through 2015, making companies' investment in growing online services an important key to success in the music industry. Spotify AG continued to dominate the streaming space, making the company's rumored IPO even more enticing. Many are expecting to see Spotify go public some time in 2015 with a valuation of around $10 billion. Pandora Media Inc. P, Spotify's publicly traded competition, made itself more visible this year by making a deal with Microsoft Corp MSFT to feature a Pandora music streaming app on the company's Xbox One that will allow gamers to listen to personalized radio stations why playing. Google Inc. GOOG, hoping to hook customers who have been using YouTube to stream music, rolled out a Google Play Music All Access account, which offers users a 22 million song database for just $9.99 per month. Meanwhile, Apple Inc's AAPL iTunes looked to be falling behind, but many see 2015 as a developmental year in which the company will get on board with the streaming trend. Apple recently bought Beats Music for $3 billion, a deal which most expect to see exploited in the coming year. Beats currently offers a $9.99 per month streaming service, which will likely become a part of iTunes' offerings in the near future.