US music streaming set to top 1 trillion in 2019 according to market analysts, Nielsen in their US Music Mid-Year Report 2019. On-demand streaming continues to super-charge the US music industry with more than 507 billion streams in the first half of 2019 with expectations of exceeding 1 trillion streams for the full year. This was led by singles and albums by Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, Halsey Khalid, BTS, LIl Nas X and Bad Bunny that span a wide array of genres, moods and even languages.
LPs remain popular among music aficionados and independent retail events like Record Store Day continue to engage vinyl-loving music fans in droves. This year’s celebration led to the highest non-holiday sales total at independent retail since 2005 and extended vinyl’s hot streak, as LP sales are up 19% year-to-date.
US H1 2019 Highlights
- Total Album Equivalent Consumption – 361 million (304 million in 2018)
- On-demand streaming – 507.7 billion (385.7 billion in 2018) an increase of 31.6% year on year.
- Physical album sales (which includes 7.7 million vinyl LP sales) – 32.5 million (38.3 million in 2018). Vinyl LP sales increased 10% from 7 million in 2018).
- Digital downloads continued to decline with 154.1 million tracks in 2019 compared to 207.1 million in 2018, and album downloads falling from 25.2 million in 2018 to 19.1 million in 2019 – a decrease of 24.4%.
- Film and TV music continued its recent resurgence with A Star is Born duet reaching No. 1 in the Billboard Hot 100 following the 2019 Academy Awards. Elton John has seen an 84% increase in his music sales following the 31st May release of the biopic ‘Rocket Man’. Queen has sold 731,000 albums Year to Date following the video on demand release of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ in February.
- Record Store Day 2019 propelled a 12.8% increase from 2018 with 827,000 vinyl albums sold during the Record Store Day week. Vinyl LP sales increased 9.6% year on year reaching a total of 7.7 million albums during the 6 month period.
To read the full report go here.
