Research company Midia Research has published its latest report, produced for client LyricFind, which understandably focuses mostly on the role lyrics could play in the music-streaming market.

But the white paper has some very interesting stats on streaming’s status – and the market share of the big streaming services – in the US, UK and Germany.

Amazon’s surge in Germany is one of those key datapoints. According to Midia’s survey, Amazon Prime Music now has 18% penetration in Germany when it comes to weekly active users, just a single percentage point behind Spotify (19%) and well ahead of Apple Music (7%).

In the US and UK, Apple Music is still ahead (14% and 9% respectively for Apple’s service compared to 12% and 8% for Amazon’s) but Prime Music’s importance is clear.

Spotify’s status as the top audio-streaming service in the US and UK is also assured: it has a 20% and 23% penetration rate respectively according to Midia’s survey.

Once video is included, YouTube remains the biggest service: 27% penetration in the US and Germany respectively, and 23% in the UK where – as per Midia’s analysis last year – Spotify is hard on its heels.

On the bigger picture, the report claims that across the US, UK and Germany, 43% of consumers stream for free – behind only radio’s 66% penetration rate – while 15% say they have a music subscription.

The report also suggests that more consumers are stream-ripping (6%) than buying vinyl (5%), which is useful context for the excitement around the latter’s revival – as well as rightsholders’ keenness to crack down on stream-ripping sites.

As for lyrics, Midia’s survey claims that 79% of all music streamers use them, although that rises to 88% for music subscribers.

“Lyrics have a clear correlation with music subscriber tenure and with churn. The longer that consumers have been music subscribers, the more likely they are to use lyrics, while consumers that have cancelled their subscriptions are much less likely to use lyrics,” it reports.

“The inference is the more that a streaming service can engage its subscribers with lyrics, the more likely it is to meet their needs and improve its chances of retaining them as subscribers.” Music to LyricFind’s ears, no doubt.