Without music, life would be a mistake, as Nietzsche would say, and the Portuguese literally subscribe to it.
This is what the recent Bareme Internet 2021 study, by Marktest, tells us, which quantifies the number of Portuguese residents aged 15 and over at 4,453,000 on the mainland who reported listening to music online, a number that represents 52% of the universe in analyze.
Of this percentage, the highlight goes to YouTube, a platform that gathered 44.2% of the preferences of Portuguese people who listen to music. Despite its wide dissemination and penetration in Portuguese society, Spotify ends up gathering “only” 21.4% of preferences.
Like the Sun, music when it is born is for everyone, but not all Portuguese people seem interested in listening to music online, as highlighted by the Marktest study, which ends up finding quite heterogeneous values in the different demographic variables, with the differences being more pronounced in the age groups. .
Thus, while 92.8% of young people between the ages of 15 and 24 reported listening to music online (last 30 days), in subsequent age groups it gradually drops to 87.3% between 25 and 34, 71.3% between 35 and 44 years old, 47.5% between 45 and 54 years old, 27.1% between 55 and 64 years old, reaching a value of 9.1% among the elderly (individuals over 64 years old).
In addition to the notorious differences in the penetration capacity of online music platforms according to age, when analyzing the social class to which Portuguese people who listen to music online belong, it is clear that there are marked discrepancies.
According to the Bareme Internet 2021 study by Marktest, the higher classes, that is, the ones with the most income, are the ones who most report listening to music online, especially the Upper class with a percentage of 83.3%. At the opposite pole is the Lower class, which has a percentage of 19.7%.
Online platforms contribute to the good moment felt by the music industry
The pandemic and the strong demand for digital services that it has fostered help to explain, in part, the “democratization” of the use of online music platforms, in particular among younger people, as João Teixeira, director general of Warner Music Portugal, emphasizes. in a recent interview with the newspaper Expresso: “kids, as you know, consume avidly. In addition to having the time, they are able to listen to a track twenty times a day, whenever they like. An adult does not have this behavior“.
Despite being one of the first industries to be heavily affected by the explosion of the Internet in the 90s and early 00s (with a drop that reached 80%), music knew how to reinvent itself to adapt to new times. Streaming platforms, which made it possible to mitigate the impact of music piracy, are, for Teixeira, a fine example.
“The work and risk of having videos on computers, when music could be had in a simple, high-quality and safe way, took her away from”, making the industry today going through an excellent moment of form, says the official.
If, as the director of Warner Music Portugal insists on underlining, “nowadays people don’t own the songs, they just rent them to listen”, this is largely due to the speed, security and simplicity of acquiring a streaming service in the digital world.
These factors end up having a decisive weight for the extraordinary percentage of Portuguese who converted to this type of platform, since an internet connection and a credit card are enough to make a subscription or an online purchase.
In this regard, UNIBANCO credit cards should be highlighted, which, in addition to not having an annual fee, provide access to between 20 and 50 days of interest-free credit. The Attitude Card, one of the UNIBANCO cards, also allows payments to be divided into 3 interest-free installments (above €300), as well as receiving up to €200 during the first 12 months of what you spend, as these are credit cards with cashback.
To all these advantages, there is yet another one. As “making” a UNIBANCO credit card is a 100% digital process, the consumer can complete the entire operation from their smartphone or PC and, from the same device, subscribe to an online music streaming service.