Digital Plumbing: The Infrastructure Behind Streaming Music

Throughout history, making and sharing music has been a core part of the human experience. But, like nearly every other aspect of our lives, digital technology has fundamentally changed the way we experience music. Because of streaming music apps, we can select exactly what we want to hear, when and where we want to hear it. In fact, the major apps like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and YouTube Music all boast libraries of more than 100 million songs,[1] with more added all the time.

Streaming apps also make music a more social experience. This could mean sharing and co-creating playlists with your friends. Or, it could mean experiencing a new album release at the same time as millions of other fans, like we saw recently with Taylor Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl.” Streaming apps make this kind of collective listening experience possible because they use modern digital infrastructure that can scale up capacity on demand. That’s why even the biggest album drops of all time don’t break the internet.

Most listeners never stop to think about what happens in the tiny window where their favorite music is played. For one thing, they may be unaware of the algorithms running under the hood that play a crucial role in determining their user experience. For instance, recommendation algorithms, such as collaborative filtering and content-based filtering, analyze user behavior and preferences to suggest songs and playlists tailored to individual tastes. Collaborative filtering identifies patterns in user interactions, allowing the app to recommend music that similar users have enjoyed, while content-based filtering focuses on the attributes of the music itself, such as genre, tempo and instrumentation.

Our Digital Plumbing blog series looks at the hidden infrastructure that enables this and other modern digital experiences that we take for granted. We’ve already looked at things like cat videos and rideshare apps. In this latest post, we’ll go behind the scenes to look at the digital plumbing that makes streaming music apps possible.

Digital infrastructure enables the streaming experience

To understand how streaming music works, and how modern digital infrastructure supports it, it’s helpful to think about what you really get when you pay for a monthly streaming subscription. You’re not buying the music itself; you’re buying access to a digital library of music. You can play the music in that library as much as you want and even download it to your device for offline listening, but at no point do you own that music.

The music remains stored in a data center somewhere. In the early days of streaming, it was common for this to be equipment in a traditional on-premises data center managed directly by the streaming service. Nowadays, streamers have much more choice and flexibility when it comes to their digital infrastructure. They may choose a hybrid cloud model, where they use their own private data centers for certain purposes and public cloud data centers for others. Either way, the streamer relies on network infrastructure and ecosystem partners to get music from the data center to your device.

If your access to the music library was interrupted for any reason, then you’d no longer be getting the value that you pay for. Thus, the user experience of a music streaming service is directly dependent on being able to scale up network capacity quickly and manage traffic to avoid outages or delays.

To reach the listener, a song typically follows these steps:

• A record label or independent artist provides the digital audio file to the streaming company.
• The streamer stores the file in their music library, which may be on their own data center storage equipment or origin servers in a cloud. Cloud storage does exist in physical data centers somewhere, but streamers aren’t concerned with where those data centers are or how they’re managed. They leave that to their cloud partners.
• Streamers utilize load-balancing algorithms to distribute user requests efficiently across servers, ensuring that even during peak times—like major album releases—users experience minimal buffering and downtime. These algorithms dynamically allocate resources based on real-time demand, which is essential for maintaining performance during high-traffic events.
• The streamer uses content delivery networks (CDNs) to distribute the song to listeners. The CDNs use a process known as caching, which means using geographically distributed edge servers to temporarily store the song, uploaded from the library location. These edge servers help get the song as close as possible to listeners.
• After a listener hits play on the song, the request is automatically routed to the closest CDN server to the listener using internet transit or an internet exchange point (IXP). Shortening the distance between server and listener is essential to minimizing latency and avoiding delays.
• The song often covers the “last mile” between the server and the listener’s device via mobile wireless networks.

Reliable network connectivity is required to keep the song moving throughout this workflow. Private interconnection could be the ideal way for streamers to access this connectivity, as it can provide high performance and security. In particular, a virtual interconnection solution can scale to provide bandwidth on demand. This removes the need for streamers to rely on dedicated physical connections and internet transit.

Inside the streaming ecosystem

Music streamers rely on different ecosystem partners to ensure a reliable listener experience without delays or outages.

Cloud providers

Cloud providers offer more than just scalable capacity to store music libraries. Streamers can also use cloud tools to enable analytics capabilities. They can process user data in order to better understand listeners’ musical tastes, and even develop AI algorithms to help fine-tune the selections. In turn, this can help them make better recommendations for what listeners may want to hear next.

Like any other digital-first company, streamers may choose to work with different cloud providers for different purposes. For instance, they may store their music library in one cloud and use a different cloud for analytics. In this case, they’ll need to implement effective multicloud networking to move traffic between clouds.

CDNs

Streamers need to understand where their listeners are and choose the right CDNs to reach those listeners. Different CDNs specialize in different geographic regions, so a global streamer will logically need many CDNs to ensure global coverage. This is important because music streaming is growing throughout the world, especially in developing markets: In 2024, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America all saw revenue growth of greater than 20%.[2]

In addition, streamers have to think about how to distribute the right content to the right CDNs in the right places. They must account for the fact that certain artists and genres are more popular in certain parts of the world than in others. They also have to consider distribution rights. If certain songs can only be distributed in certain markets, then they need CDNs that can help them ensure those songs reach only the allowed markets.

Mobile carriers

Users have become accustomed to taking music with them everywhere they go, from commuting to exercising. When they find themselves without access to a reliable Wi-Fi connection, wireless networks provided by mobile carriers can fill in the gaps. Streamers therefore have to work with a cast of different carriers in different places to ensure that their traffic takes the quickest route possible to reach the listener, thus limiting the potential for delays.

Where the streaming ecosystem gathers

At Equinix, we’re proud to play our small part in helping Swifties—and all the other fandoms of the world—access the music they love. All the different providers that make up the streaming music ecosystem can be found inside Equinix IBX® colocation data centers. For instance, Equinix data centers are home to:

• ~3,000 cloud and IT services providers
• ~400 content and digital media companies
• 2,000+ network services providers

Equinix is also the global market leader in low-latency cloud on-ramps, with 220+ on-ramps across the six largest cloud providers. This means that streamers can choose different clouds in different locations to ensure flexible multicloud infrastructure across the globe.

All Equinix cloud on-ramps are accessible via Equinix Fabric®, our Network as a Service solution. Using Equinix Fabric, streamers can set up on-demand virtual connections with the providers in their partner ecosystem. Any time they experience spikes in demand, they can scale up those connections quickly and cost-effectively. In addition, Equinix Fabric includes a built-in virtual routing service—Equinix Fabric Cloud Router—designed specifically for organizations looking to implement a multicloud application strategy.

Many Equinix customers are cutting through multicloud complexity to achieve a better balance of performance, innovation, costs and control. Learn how you could, too: Read the white paper Thriving with a hybrid multicloud strategy.

[1] Brad Bourque and Matt Jancer, The Best Music Streaming Services to Get Your Groove On, Wired, July 17, 2025.

[2] Global Music Report 2025: State of the Industry, IFPI, 2025.