Audio Video News

The number of on-demand audio streams exceeded 184 billion during the first six months of the year, representing a 62 percent increase over the same period in 2016, according to recently released mid-year statistics from Nielsen Music.

Online streaming also hit a milestone in March when weekly streams surpassed 7.5 billion for the first time.

Sales of digital albums and tracks, on the other hand, experienced sharp declines of 18 and 24 percent, respectively, reflecting a music market that remains in transition. Digital album sales reached 35 million, down from almost 44 million in 2016, while digital track sales hit 307 million, down from 404 million a year earlier.

Overall album sales, including track-equivalent albums (where 10 tracks equals one album) and physical sales, were down almost 20 percent for the year with unit sales of 112.6 million. Physical album sales accounted for 46.9 million, 17 percent less than 2016.

Nielsen Music also reported that for the first time in its history, R&B/Hip-Hop surpassed Rock as the largest music genre, accounting for 25 percent of total volume; Rock slipped to 23 percent. R&B/Hip-Hop also dominates streaming, accounting for more than 30 percent of all audio on-demand streams, which is nearly as much as the next two genres combined (Rock is 18 percent and Pop is 13 percent).

While Rock still dominates album sales, with over 40 percent share of albums, its share of streaming is only 16 percent. Country, also a strong 12 percent in albums and nearly 14 percent in physical albums, continues to lag in streaming with just 5.6 percent of total streaming. The Latin genre continues to be strong in streaming, particularly video streaming where it makes up 15 percent of the total. Pop continues to get a disproportionately high share of digital track sales, with the consumer clearly still having a desire to own the big pop hits.