There’s also Google Music, and Youtube Red. And although I didn’t use the latter, the former is the best streaming platform from all I’ve used so far. They have vast music catalogue, and I’m surprised what little niche gems you can find there. And they have superior music matching algorithms (for when you want to play music similar to the one you’ve been listening to already) to any other streaming service I used. But… I diverged.
Look at market share:
taken from Mid-Year 2018 Streaming Market Shares | Music Industry Blog
There are few big players, but still looking at how much of market has the biggest player: Spotify, and how many players there are in game, and how the market is steadily growing I think there is still place for few other services at least.
From what I know, music labels have no problems with licensing its music to streaming services. It has proven to be profitable, and that’s all what they care about. Labels are also not so keen to being exclusive to any service, exactly because none of the services has majority, and still there is lot of movement there. If you, as a label, have choice to profit a little more per song from 36% of market, or a little less but from 36% + 19% + 12% what would you choose? But that’s rhetorical question, we all know it.
What they have problems with is licencing music to services that have free tiers. From what I know, Spotify have problems, and recently some Artists are available only on the paid tier, because otherwise Music Labels would pull them as a whole from Spotify.
Market is clearly not saturated.
None of the services have a killer app. All the big players rely on marketing. In my conclusion there is still place for new service (provided it has big enough initial funding), but to be successful it has to have a killer app. And by killer app I mean iOS/Android app along with similar desktop one. And though Elixir seems like a good choice for backend… backend is actually irrelevant.
PS. When it comes to licencing the problem is more than often with the artists themselves and not Labels. Music Labels want as much income as possible, and don’t care about anything else in the end. Some Artist… just read this article: The 10 Biggest Artists That Refuse to Stream Their Music but mind it’s from 2015 and some things changed: The Beatles are available on Google Music (don’t know about other services), and some didn’t: I can’t find King Crimson studio albums on any streaming service (last i checked).
PPS. It came out as response to @hauleth, but it’s not aimed at you specifically, sorry. Post just grew as I was typing 