This Week in Apps - So, Wallpapers?
This Week in Apps is a short, no-fluff, round-up of interesting things that happened in the mobile industry. Here are our top highlights.
U.S. Revenue Index (vs. 30 days ago)
Insights
1. YouTube Creator MKBHD is Trying to Take on a Sleeper Industry
If you're on the internet, you've probably heard about MKBHD's wallpaper app - Panels. If you haven't, the gist is that a well-known tech reviewer released an app, and the internet did to the app what the creator does to products he reviews on his channel.
Putting all of the controversy aside, because the app isn't that bad, seeing anyone getting into the wallpaper app space in 2024 got me curious - is this a gold mine no one's talking about?
I found all of the apps that have wallpapers in their name using Explorer, and there were a lot more than I expected - 30,667.
The thing is... Most of those apps barely make any money, and by most, I mean only 131 made more than $100 last month after store fees.
We estimate that the average monthly revenue of those 131 apps is $10.3K, which is, again, higher than I expected considering how many there are! The top earner brought in more than $400K, according to our estimates, and together, all 131 earned $1.4M of net revenue in the last month.
That's a lot more than I expected.
The top earner is Zedge, which leads this category by serving wallpapers and ringtones. Our App Intelligence shows that the majority of Zedge's revenue comes from Google Play in the US with other English-speaking countries behind it.
Other than Zedge, there are 18 other wallpaper apps that made more than $10K (after fees) in the last 30 days, including MKBHD's, even though it's only been out for a handful of days. That's a good sign for MKBHD, if he can keep it up.
I'm pretty surprised by how much money there is in wallpapers. Considerably more than I imagined, considering it's 2024. But before you get started coding, wallpaper apps are a fairly crowded market.
I can see why MKBHD got into it, considering his penchant for wallpapers and a massive following on YouTube and X. It may even work for him. But given the lack of excitement about the category and the limited potential for innovation in the field, I wouldn't call this a gold mine.
2. TikTok's Music Experiment Comes to an Abrupt End
For about a year now, TikTok has been experimenting with having a dedicated, subscription based, music app that where users can stream music directly. The app integrated right into TikTok so users can get music from their favorite videos as well as from major labels.
The app soft launched in Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Australia, and Singapore last summer. With three million downloads in its first three months, it looked like TikTok Music will become a big headache for the big streamers as soon as it lands in the US.
But it didn't...
After a big release that saw the app downloaded by more than a million users in its first two months, downloads started sliding. That's pretty expected for any app, but in TikTok's case, the sliding didn't stop.
By September, however, downloads dropped 35% to 781K and in October, TikTok Music's downloads took a big hit, dropping a whopping 48% to just 403K - a third of where they were at launch.
While there was some growth between October and February, every other month since has seen a decline in downloads. This month will be TikTok's worst as downloads are predicted to drop below 100K for the first time in the app's short life.
What a run for an experiment!
But... According to our App Intelligence, TikTok Music was downloaded 7.2M times since launch and earned Bytedance $2.7M of net revenue from the App Store and Google Play, which contributed nearly even shares. Like downloads, the last few months have not been great for TikTok music's revenue, which declined consistently every month.
Did TikTok Music fail, or was there something bigger at play?
In its announcement, TikTok said it's still focused on making it easy for its users to access music through an option to launch songs from videos in their favorite streaming app, making me believe the shutdown wasn't a result of the lack of growth but rather a business move to fortify its relationships with labels and streaming apps as opposed to battle them.
3. Audible's First Billion
Amazon's audiobook platform, Audible, is one of those apps that keep on growing without much fanfare. This summer, Audible's revenue crossed a major milestone - A billion dollars in net revenue (what Amazon gets to keep after store fees).
Let's see how it got there.
Before we get into the dollars, it's worth noting that Audible didn't always use in-app purchases. The change is fairly recent. Today, anyone can subscribe to a paid plan to listen to the books available in Audible's catalog - and that's where the money is coming from.
Audible started offering in-app purchases in Audible all the way back in 2019, but not to all users. That came roughly a year and a half later. During that time, monthly net revenue already built up to more than $6M, according to our App Intelligence. And that's net, which means what Amazon gets to keep after Apple's and Google's fees.
Audible's Time to First Million, net, was just 10 months!
Revenue continued to grow fast during the lockdown years. Our estimates show revenue skyrocketing to $16M in January of 2022 - a 166% increase in just a few short months.
Revenue continued to grow throughout the year and hit Audible's all-time high in January of 2023 with $40M. This is the most the app has ever made in a single month, and the peak started a decline that continued through all of 2023. We've seen many apps follow this trend. And like those other apps, 2024 brought stability.
This year opened with a modest $36M in January which dipped to as low as $30M right after but has been growing over the summer. As of August, Audible is back to $36M and the trend is looking up.
And while revenue was going up and down, Audible crossed a massive milestone. According to our estimates, Audible's cumulative revenue crossed a billion dollars in June - 59 months after it started offering in-app purchases.
Like many other content platforms, Audible has expanded over the years to provide its own content (Audible Originals) and created a lower-cost subscription tier, both of which help push revenue up - the same strategy we see from movie streaming platforms.
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4. Millions of Downloads for... Cookies
I love seeing a good Food-for-Downloads™ promotion that actually works. It doesn't have to be intricate or wild in any way, something dessert company Crumbl showed last week with its simple 6 for 4 promotion for its birthday.
Although Crumbl's promotion was also available in-store, which only partially qualifies it as a Food-for-Downloads™ promotion, it led me to check Crumbl's downloads trend, where I found out just how many people have downloaded the app since it launched six years ago.
And it was more than I expected!
Our App Intelligence shows that in 2024, Crumbl managed to grow its daily downloads from an average of around 10K in January to more than 30K in August. Together, those added up to a smidge over 5M downloads so far this year. That's more downloads than Chipotle got this year.
At this rate, Crumbl should beat last year's haul of 6.5M downloads and if growth continues, may get close to beating its best year to date, 2022, which scored the cookie maker 8.7M downloads.
Since its launch back in 2018, the Crumbl app has made its way into more than 25M phones, according to our estimates.
For contrast, rival cookie chain Insomnia had 2M downloads since the begining of 2017 - less than 10%. That's a big win for Crumbl.
Being on-device gives food chains a great marketing advantage and is the kind of power-up that not only enables growth but also takes a potential customer away from a competitor. A win-win. That's why I expect we'll continue to see such promotions, especially such simple ones.
5. SoundCloud's 2024 Revenue Already Outpaced 2023
There's another side to music streaming that Spotify and Apple Music don't have command of - User generated music. Now, you might be thinking, "is that even a real thing?". The answer is yes, and demand from both creators and consumers has reached a new peak!
SoundCloud is a unique platform in that it's pretty niche and gets to charge all of its users - both creators and listeners - whereas other platforms charge consumers and pay creators. Something SoundCloud can do because it's not really a social media platform and is more like a traditional streamer, even though its content is mostly all user generated.
Between creators who pay $10.99 - $19.99 and listeners who pay $4.99 - $9.99, SoundCloud earned $10M from the App Store and Google Play in September, according to our estimates. And that's after store fees.
It's the most SoundCloud has ever earned in a single month, and it comes a month after SoundCloud's previous all-time best, which was also just a month after its all-time best. In fact, every single month since June was like that.
In fact, SoundCloud's revenue has been growing steadily and fairly consistently for years. The last two, however, are massive.
In 2022, we estimate SoundCloud earned $47M of net revenue. In 2023, the platform's yearly haul skyrocketed to $72M, almost twice as much.
2024 is even better. With three whole months to go, SoundCloud's revenue is already higher than 2023, the platform's best year on record. According to our App Intelligence, SoundCloud has already amassed $77M of net revenue so far in the year. Even if revenue didn't grow faster, which it is, SoundCloud is likely to cross $100M by the year's end.
SoundCloud is currently #57 on the App Store's top-grossing list in the US, where most of SoundCloud's revenue, 51% in September, is coming from.
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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.
