Several, lesser known music streaming services from countries such as France and India have been showing spectacular growth that has been challenging Spotify while Pandora still claims the top spot in the United States.
A comprehensive report from App Annie analyzed the performance of streaming services by looking into the number of downloads, revenue and active users.
While Spotify has been crowned as the top music service in the world, Deezer has already reached No. 1 in France even if the overall European region prefers still prefers Spotify, according to TechCrunch.
Likewise, Japan now has services such as AWA Music and Line Music, which have both experienced massive popularity locally. Historically, the country famous for anime and manga has been dominated by internet radio and services operated by KDDI and NTT DoCoMo.
Through the rise of AWA Music and Line Music, the Japanese companies have drastically increased the data consumption of local users on streaming apps by almost 400 percent between the third quarters of 2014 and 2015.
For music lovers in India, the top ten list of streaming services has already included Saavn and Gaana.
As other streaming services gain ground despite the global advantage of Spotify, South Korea's MelOn, which has been the nation's top music streaming app, has already moved into the global top ten list for all iPhone users. The success of MelOn has also indicated a surprising rise of iOS users in South Korea since the country has typically preferred Android gadgets.
In the U.S., Spotify also still has to beat Pandora Radio, which is still the top choice for both iOS and Android music lovers. Moreover, Pandora has acquired Rdio as the on-demand streaming service hopes to capture a larger share of the market.
Meanwhile, Spotify released the top artists and songs of the year, according to Forbes. Drake came out at No. 1 as the rapper received more than 1.8 million streams throughout the year, thanks in part to the hit album "If You're Reading This It's Too Late."
Aside from Drake, the four other artists who completed the top five were The Weeknd, Kanye West, Ed Sheeran and Eminem. On a global scale, Rihanna reigned supreme in the top 5 females list after having more than 1 billion streams.