Alphabet’s
GOOGL
division Google has started rolling out 2022 Recap features on its music-streaming service, YouTube Music.
YouTube Music’s 2022 Recap features personalized stats showing top songs of each season and other details including top artists, tracks, music videos, and playlists.
The 2022 Recap includes Top Trends showing artists discovered by a user, and Identity creating a music personality showing user’s music taste. Moreover, it shows the remixes, live performances, and other unique-to-YouTube content that the user has listened this year.
Android and iOS users can view the Recap stats by tapping their profile avatar in the top-right corner on YouTube Music.
Apart from these, Google lets users combine music and memories to view the moments of the entire year with Google Photos integration.
Further, Google is gearing up to bring the Recap feature to the YouTube app to let users view their personalized playlists, stats as well as share stories.
With the abovementioned features, Google is providing an enhanced experience to Android and iOS users. This is likely to boost the adoption rate of YouTube Music.
Thus, the increasing uptake of the music-streaming platform is expected to benefit GOOGL’s top line in the days ahead.
Growing YouTube Music Efforts
Apart from the latest move, Alphabet recently rolled out the redesigned album UI on Android tablet. The redesign version shows the artiste’s name, type of media and the release year on top. Options like download, add to library, play, share and an overflow menu are also included.
In addition, GOOGL introduced shortcut features and an album carousel to the YouTube Music’s Explore tab.
GOOGL added a capability whereby users can save queues as playlists. Alphabetalso rolled out its Recent Played and Turntable widgets to Android users.
We believe the growing efforts will continue to contribute well to Alphabet’s Google services’ revenues in the upcoming period.
Revenues from the Google services business increased 2.5% year over year to $61.4 billion, accounting for 88.8% of the total third-quarter revenues.
Competitive Music Streaming Market
The growing music-streaming initiatives are positioning Alphabet well to rapidly penetrate the booming global music-streaming market.
Per a Grand View Research
report
, the global music streaming market is expected to see a CAGR of 14.7% from 2022 to 2030.
This, in turn, is likely to help GOOGL to win the confidence of the investors in the days ahead.
Shares of Alphabet have been down 34.3% in the year-to-date period compared with the
Computer and Technology
sector’s decline of 36.3%.
However, Alphabet faces intense competitive pressure from other companies like
Amazon
AMZN
,
Apple
AAPL
and
Spotify
SPOT
, which are making consistent efforts to capitalize on the above-mentioned prospects.
Amazon is gaining strong momentum in the music streaming market on the back of its expanding global footprint. AMZN offers its premium music subscription service Amazon Music Unlimited to customers. With Amazon Music Unlimited, music lovers can listen to any song anytime and anywhere on all types of devices, including smartphone, tablet, PC/Mac, Fire TV and Alexa-enabled devices like Amazon Echo. AMZN has lost 44.5% in the year-to-date period.
Shares of Apple have been down 20.5% in the same time frame. Apple’s music-streaming service Apple Music offers a subscription tier powered by Siri named Apple Music Voice Plan. Using Apple Music Voice Plan, subscribers can access millions of songs, playlists, personalized mixes, genre stations and Apple Music Radio. Music listeners can also download the Apple Music app on their Android tablet or Chromebook supporting Android apps.
Spotify provides commercial free music and ad-supported services to customers. Music lovers can enjoy ad-free music and offline playbacks with Spotify Premium service. SPOT users can enjoy the tablet version of Spotify on their iPad or Android tablets. Spotify has lost 67.9% in the year-to-date period.
Amazon, Apple and Spotify’s growing efforts are expected to remain a threat to Alphabet’s position in the music streaming market.
Currently, Alphabet carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).
You can see
the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here
.
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