CNIT: Mobile music APP downloads and month-on-month growth at the end of April 2014

China IT Research Center (CNIT-Research) has compiled statistics on the download volume of mobile music apps on major Android distribution platforms, including Android Market, 360 Mobile Assistant, Wandoujia, App Store, 91 Assistant, Baidu Mobile Assistant, Anzhi Market, Kingsoft Mobile Assistant, and Mumayi.

As of April 30, 2014, the total download volume and monthly growth of major mobile music apps on the nine major mobile distribution platforms are shown in the following figure:

Data shows that the download volume of Kugou Music, Tiantian Dongting, Kuwo Music, QQ Music, and Duomi Music still occupy the top five in the market. Among them, Kugou Music ranks first with 850.671 million downloads, becoming the first mobile music APP to exceed 800 million downloads. Next is Tiantian Dongting, Kuwo Music, QQ Music, Duomi Music, and Baidu Music with download volumes of 583.481 million, 454.076 million, 363.515 million, 228.834 million, and 152.505 million, respectively. Douban FM, Yinyuetai, Xiami Music, and NetEase Cloud Music have lower download volumes, at 22.0907 million, 21.8145 million, 21.3754 million, and 5.63 million, respectively.

Changba, which mainly focuses on karaoke, had 160.536 million downloads by the end of April. As a music radio station in the niche market of mobile music, Koala FM, relying on user data mining and recommendation, has gained a certain number of users while making full use of the vast music library. By the end of April, the number of downloads reached 9.9713 million, exceeding NetEase Cloud Music.

The growth rate of mobile music APP industry is less than 8%

Influenced by the May Day Music Festival, major mobile music apps have stepped up their product promotion efforts since late April, but the results have been less than satisfactory. Data shows that the total number of downloads of the top ten mobile music apps was 270,399,260 by the end of April, an increase of 7.66% from the total number of downloads of 251,152,600 by the end of March. The overall growth rate of the industry has slowed down to less than 8%.

In April, the download volume of Kugou Music increased by 7.7% month-on-month, which was in line with the overall growth rate of the industry. Tiantian Dongting's month-on-month growth rate of 5.3% was lower than the industry growth level, while Duomi Music ranked last among the top ten mobile music apps with a month-on-month growth rate of 3.0%. Xiami Music had the highest month-on-month growth rate of downloads, at 20.9%.

Zhang Yu, an analyst at China IT Research Center, believes that after the rapid development in recent years, the era of mobile music APPs scrambling for space has become a thing of the past, and the industry will enter a slower maturity period. How to get rid of the homogeneity of industry products and functions has become the key, and the innovation of personalized functions and applications, as well as finding the combination of online products and offline user-related markets will become the next focus of competition.