Asian-Americans Outspend Average Music Fans, New Study Shows

By Glenn Peoples 

If you want to better understand affluent, digitally savvy music consumers, get to know the 19 million Asian-Americans in the United States. 

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A new Nielsen report, "Listen Up: Asian-American Consumers and Music," details a multi-cultural group that spends more on music and that adopts music-related technologies faster than the population at large.

Nielsen's new report says Asian-Americans spend more on music than the average American consumer by a margin of $112 to $105. They spend more on live music -- $44 per person each year -- than any other multicultural segment of the population. The $19 they average on annual CD purchases is $6 more than the national average. They also spend twice the national average on music gift cards.
A previous Nielsen report released in December called Asian-Americans "affluent, well-educated, geographically-concentrated and technologically savvy." Their households earn and spend above the national average, they're more likely to make online purchases and they adopt technology faster than any other segment of the population.  

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This relative affluence can be seen in adoption of technologies. More Asian-Americans have a smartphone (81 percent) than the overall population (70 percent) and more of them have downloaded music on a smartphone (22 percent to 16 percent). Spotify is twice as popular with Asian-Americans (14.4 percent) than with Americans in general (7.6 percent). Asian-Americans are more likely than the average American to listen to music on a laptop (36 percent versus 23 percent), an iPhone (25 percent versus 17 percent), an Android smartphone (22 percent to 16 percent) and an Apple laptop (13 percent to 5 percent). 

When it comes to musical preferences, howeer, Asian-Americans aren't unlike the population as a whole. Pop is the favorite genre of 23 percent of Asian Americans, followed by hip hop with 9 percent, R&B with 8 percent and 7 percent for both rock/alternative and country.