U.S. consumption of music continued to grow in the first half of 2016, even as sales of most formats declined, according to Border City Media’s state-of-the-industry data service, BuzzAngle Music. With the pace of audio streaming more than doubling activity tracked over the same period last year, total industry consumption was up by 6.5%.
Interestingly, YouTube and Vevo are no longer the biggest music streaming games around. According to BuzzAngle, on-demand music streams on digital video platforms increased just 23% in the six month period ending in June, compared to on-demand streams by audio music platforms such as Apple Music more than doubled – up 108% year-on-year. The means music streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify have the dominant streaming format for the first time in history.
BuzzAngle says there were 209.4 billion total on-demand streams in the US market in the six-month period. That’s up 58.3% from the first half of 2015.
In total, audio streaming platforms saw 114.23 billion streams in the six months (55% of total streaming consumption) with video platforms on 95.17 billion (45% of total streaming consumption).
Album consumption rose by 6.5% when the contributions of song dreams and sales are factored in with album sales. Similarly, the combined impact of streams and digital sales saw song consumption jump 29%. (Utilizing industry standards, 10 songs sees or 1,500 streams equals one album she; 150 streams equals one song sale).
Meanwhile, even as the sales of downloads and CDs have slowed, the vinyl LP continues its resurgence. Sales in the first half of 2016 were up 17% over the first six months of 2015.
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