Spotify has tied YouTube as the most popular source of music in the U.S., according to a new consumer survey. Spotify stock rose on the news Thursday.
RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Mahaney reiterated his outperform rating on Spotify stock and raised his price target to 320 from 192. He based his bullish assessment on the results of his firm's eighth annual U.S. music survey.
On the stock market today, Spotify stock rose 4.9% to 271.49. Earlier in the session, Spotify stock hit an all-time high of 274.30.
"This is the first year that Spotify has matched YouTube as the most popular source of music, with both selected by 34% of respondents," Mahaney said in a note to clients.
Paid Music Surpasses Ad-Supported Music
After Spotify and Alphabet-owned YouTube, the most popular music sources are Sirius XM Holdings-owned Pandora (19%), Amazon Music (17%), Apple Music (15%) and AM-FM radio (15%).
RBC surveyed over 1,500 U.S. internet users for this year's study. The survey asked respondents to pick their two most common sources of music.
Last year, YouTube led with 31% of respondents. AM-FM radio was second with 27%. Pandora was third with 25%, followed by Spotify with 20%.
This year, paid music streaming surpassed free advertising-supported music streaming for the first time. Some 33% of respondents say they use paid music streaming services vs. 30% who use free ad-supported services.
Spotify dominates the U.S. paid streaming music market. Some 41% of respondents selected Spotify as their preferred paid service, followed by Apple Music at 18% and Amazon Music at 14%.
Survey Results Positive For Spotify Stock
In ad-supported music streaming, Spotify is tied with Pandora. Each service was picked as a favorite by 26% of respondents.
Spotify leads the music sector in satisfaction scores. Some 78% of users described themselves as "extremely/very satisfied" with Spotify. YouTube was second at 75%.
"We view these survey results as unambiguously positive for SPOT," Mahaney said.
Spotify stock ranks first out of 13 stocks in IBD's Computer Software-Education/Media industry group, according to the IBD Stock Checkup tool.
Follow Patrick Seitz on Twitter at @IBD_PSeitz for more stories on consumer technology, software and semiconductor stocks.
