BuzzAngle 2018 Report: Subscription Streams Account For 85 Percent Of Total Audio Streams In Q4

BuzzAngle has released consumption and industry trends statistics for 2018. Hip-hop/rap dominated the music genres in album and song consumption last year, totaling 21.7 percent of album consumption in 2018, while pop and rock followed with 20.1% and 14% respectively. R&B came in fourth with 10.6 percent in album consumption, followed by Latin at No. 5 with 9.4 percent. Country came in sixth with 8.7 percent in album consumption.

Song consumption reached a new high of 5.8 billion, rising 27.4 percent over 2017.

In 2018’s fourth quarter, subscription streams were up 50 percent, accounting for 85 percent of total audio streams for the quarter, with 157.4 billion (as compared to 2017, when subscription streams had risen 57 percent over 2016). Audio on-demand streams set a new high of 534.6 billion, rising 42 percent from 2017 (the previous record was set last year with 376.9 billion streams).

Overall album consumption grew 16.2 percent from 2017, though album sales (digital/physical) dropped 18.2 percent from 2017. Total on-demand streams were up 35.4 percent, to 809.5 billion streams for 2018.

Drake and XXXtentacion led the hip-hop/rap surge for 2018. For a second straight year, Drake earned Artist of the Year, Album of the Year (Scorpion) and Song of the Year (“God’s Plan”).

Latin is the genre most dominated by streaming, with 95 percent of its total consumption coming from on-demand streaming activity. 92 percent of Hip-Hop/Rap’s total consumption is from on-demand streams, while only 3.7 percent is from album sales.

Only nine songs were streamed more than 500 million times in 2018, compared with 16 tracks hitting the mark in 2017 (six songs reached the 500 million streams threshold in 2016 and two in 2015). 417 songs were streamed more than 100 million times in 2018, compared with 383 songs in 2017 (226 reached that mark in 2016 and 111 songs in 2015).

As the streaming surge continues, not a single song in 2018 broke one million in downloaded sales. In 2017, two songs had more than two million song downloads, and 14 songs that earned more than one million song downloads (to compare, 36 songs earned one million song downloads in 2016 and 60 songs in 2015).

Album titles from the rock & pop genres each accounted for 26 percent of all album sales in 2018.  In 2017, they accounted for 29 percent and 19.7 percent respectively. In addition, 13 percent of all album sales were country albums and 12 percent were urban albums (hip-hop/rap and R&B).

Vinyl album sales increased 12 percent in 2018, following a 20 percent growth in 2017; vinyl album sales accounted for 13.7 percent of all physical album sales, up from 10 percent in 2017. Just three years ago more than 65 percent of all vinyl album sales fell into the rock genre. In 2018, 42 percent of vinyl albums sold were from the rock genre, down from 54 percent in 2017. Twenty-six percent were pop titles, up from 14 percent in 2017, while 14.4 percent were urban titles.