Twitch currently has four main sections for all content categories, namely: games, IRL, esports, and music. The new article from Streams Charts will educate you about the “Music” aspect of the platform, including the results shown by it once being split into a separate category. We also examined the growth of this category with the onset of the pandemic and checked whether the partial lifting of quarantine restrictions has impacted the positive dynamics.
Talking about “Music”, it was already present on the platform before, but merged with other forms of arts and called “Music & Performing Arts” at the time. It became a separate category at the end of August 2020, and now it functions as one of the four main sections of the platform.
We’ve taken a look at Twitch Music results over a single calendar year since splitting into its own category (August 2020 to July 2021). As it can be seen from the graph below, there wasn’t that much sustained growth for the category over this particular period. The category started improving its indicators from February 2020, arriving at the best result of the year in May 2020: 26.5M Hours Watched. This month’s top channel was BeatportOfficial, on which various DJs performed.
Such a result may be directly tied with the onset of the pandemic: because of multiple concerts and music festivals being canceled due to restrictions, many organizers switched the format of events to online in an attempt to salvage the situation.
October 2020 became the category’s best month in terms of Peak Viewers – with 293K of them watching Twitch music concerts at the same time. This result was made possible mostly due to the broadcast of the Polish Game Music Festival 2020, which took place on October 16-17 in Wroclaw.
Since December 2020, the Music category’s Hours Watched have not yet dropped below 20M – and the category was no longer limited to music channels alone. Starting from this period it also contained broadcasts from such well-known content creators as YoDa, TubboLIVE, Ibai, and Quackity.
Most popular Music streamers of the year by Peak Viewers
WilburSoot took the first spot in the Music category. William is a well-known Minecraft streamer and also a member of the DreamSMP role-playing server. His hobbies are not limited to streaming alone: in June 2020, Wilbur released his debut music album Your City Gave Me Asthma, which included 7 original songs of this particular streamer. In June 2021, his Twitch Music category stream was dedicated to celebrating the first anniversary of the album's release and featured Wilbur singing his songs. It was this stream that was watched by 143K Peak Viewers.
Aside from WilburSoot, such well-known game streamers as Quackity, Ibai and Okyyy also entered the music top. The rest of the channels in the top are essentially radio-channels that are entirely dedicated to music. One thing to mention is the huge airtime of the English channel Abracadabra — 1832 hours per year.
Overall, the viewer statistics of a category depends on the events taking place in it. Should a festival be held on the platform – or should a popular streamer start broadcasting – the category then immediately experiences a sharp increase in viewership. Although, judging by the beginning of the summer of 2021, the number of “listeners of Music” was declining. This may be related to the gradual lifting of quarantine restrictions.
Meanwhile, there was a constant growth in the active channels and Average Viewers since January 2020. For example, the period from January to June 2020 saw 6.9K to 31.4K Average Viewers growth. The pandemic has impacted the Music category of Twitch positively, contributing both to its growth and the growth of the audience.
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