Weekly on-demand audio streaming surpassed seven billion in March

A significant streaming milestone was reached in March when weekly on-demand audio streaming surpassed seven billion thanks to services like Apple Music, according to Nielsen. For the first six months of the year, there have been 184.3 billion on-demand audio streams — a 62% increase over the same period in 2016.

Meanwhile, overall on-demand streams (including video) have surpassed 284 billion streams this year, an increase of 36.4% over the same period in 2016. There was, however, a decrease in album sales (-18.3%), albums + TEA (track equivalent albums) sales (-19.9%), digital album sales (-19.9%) and physical album sales (-17%), highlighting consumer listening habits and an industry focus on single releases.