Latin America Has 640 Million People. Why Are Fewer Than 5% of Them Paying for Streaming?

The Digital Music News Podcast

The number of streaming music subscribers is soaring: according to one report from Futuresource, more than 235 million will be paying for a streaming music service by the end of 2018. But most of those gains are happening in North America and Western Europe, while regions like Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East are seriously lagging behind.

Welcome to the next frontier for the music industry. And everyone wants a potential piece of the 'rest of the world,' including Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and Deezer.

According to Oscar Castellano, CEO of Americas for Deezer, our guest in this edition of the Digital Music News Podcast, fewer than 4-5 percent of Latin Americans are paying for a streaming music service. But why is that, and what's the strategy for unleashing the power of a music-obsessed population of nearly 650 million people? According to Castellano, there are a lot of tricky problems with this market, but also a lot of interesting ideas for solving them.