Written by Tim Ingham — Earlier this week, MBW revealed that the US record industry had undergone a historic transformation: in the first half of this year, more music streams took place on audio platforms than video platforms for the first time on record.
In plain English, 55% of on-demand streaming plays were hosted by the likes of Spotify, Apple Music and TIDAL – while 45% were hosted by YouTube and Vevo.
The stats from market monitor BuzzAngle: audio streaming platforms saw 114.23bn streams in the six months with video platforms on 95.17bn.
Now Nielsen Music has released its mid-year report on the US music market, and the good news for Spotify and co. is that the data is broadly in line with BuzzAngle’s.
According to Nielsen, audio streaming platforms saw 113.6bn streams in the six months with video platforms on 95.3bn.
Video streams grew just 28.6% year-on-year, according to the data, with audio streams up 97.4%.
Other key takeaways from Nielsen’s report, which you can read in full through here:
- Album sales, across CD, digital and LP/vinyl, were down 13.6% to 100.3m in the period;
- Digital albums were the hardest hit, down 18.4% to 43.8m;
- Digital track sales plummeted by 23.9% to 404.3m;
- Overall streams were up 58.7% to 208.9bn;
- 3 albums have sold over 1 Million units so far this year (Adele’s 25, Drake’s Views and Beyonce’s Lemonade), while there was only one million seller at this time last year (Taylor Swift’s 1989).
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