We at BuzzAngle Music are proud to release our first-ever yearly report, on 2016 U.S. music consumption. 2016 was another successful year in music, with overall consumption rising 4.2% over 2015, marking the second year in a row with solid growth.
The continued explosion of audio stream consumption, which increased 82.6% to 250B streams, fueled this increase. Both album sales and song sales continued to decline but the transition to these new access methods has shown to provide overall growth and a sustainable business model for the future. Breaking down the tremendous streaming growth shows what is perhaps the most important stat of the year: the percentage of subscription streams rose from 62% of the total in 2015 to 76% of the total in 2016. The number of 2016 subscription streams grew over 2.25x the 2015 subscription streams amount.
In addition to providing the industry with a great business model, streaming services offer music lovers a much wider selection of music at their fingertips. In 2016, there were over 28M unique songs played via a streaming service compared to 7M songs that were purchased. An average day’s audio-streaming volume in 2016 (1.2B) was much larger than the entire year’s volume of song sales (734M). More music is being listened to by more people than ever before.
The BuzzAngle 2016 U.S. music report is filled with stats on consumption, top artists, albums and songs, as well as a number of interesting and fun highlights. We hope you enjoy it and we welcome any feedback.
http://www.buzzanglemusic.com/wp-content/uploads/BuzzAngle-Music-2016-Report.pdf
