• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, April 19, 2016

Entertainment and music apps experienced “explosive” revenue growth over the past year, according to the latest report from App Annie. This was largely due to the success of subscription revenue models catering to consumer demand for streaming services, the analytics firm finds.

Within Entertainment, video streaming apps comprise the bulk of this mammoth growth in global revenue. In particular, Netflix reached the top spot worldwide for video streaming apps on iOS after introducing in-app subscriptions, late last year.

Revenue growth among the top five video streaming apps is mostly attributed to the United States and China.

In fact, two of the top five video streaming apps by worldwide iOS revenue -- HBO Now and Hulu -- are still only available in the U.S. marketplace.

Conversely, revenue for iQIYI and Tencent Video -- which round out the top five -- is driven almost entirely by the Chinese consumer base.

Despite these heavyweight countries, video streaming transcends international boundaries, with global demand ripe for the picking.

This is evidenced by 34% of Netflix’s revenue coming from outside the United States at the close of 2015, and the rise of local players in regional markets, which is the case for video streaming services like Tuluntulu in Africa.

App Annie also reports music streaming apps experienced strong worldwide year-over-year growth in top app stores in the first quarter of 2016.

Spotify held on to its top spot for worldwide iOS revenue in music. Yet there are also many local players catering to regional consumer demand and smaller services making a splash. China’s QQ Music and TIDAL are two such apps that experienced large revenue growth in the first quarter.

More broadly, China has surpassed Japan and is the second-biggest generator of app-related revenue. China’s quarterly iOS revenue grew more than 200% from the first quarter of 2015 to the first quarter of 2016. The revenue growth was driven almost entirely by games.

China continued to see strong downloads after surpassing the United States in the first quarter of 2015 to become the largest market for iOS downloads. In surpassing Japan, China narrowed in on the United States, which is still currently ranked first in iOS game revenue.

If China’s iOS game revenue continues to grow at these rates, it is set to pass the U.S. in the coming quarters, App Annie predicts . Yet the U.S. still maintains a sizable 30% lead on China for total iOS App Store revenue due to the growth in monetization of non-gaming apps in the country.

Going forward, the stage is set for substantial revenue growth in competitive mobile gaming events, also known as eSports, App Annie predicts.