Streaming All The Buzz For 2016

While album and song physical sales continue to decline, streaming has provided overall growth and a sustainable business model for recorded music, according to BuzzAngle’s annual “Music 2016 U.S. Report.” 

Music streaming continued its explosion in 2016, with overall consumption up a staggering 82.6 percent (250 billion streams) on 2015 and subscription streaming plans making up 76 percent of total audio streams.

Subscription streaming plans were up 125 percent on 2015. Overall music consumption was up 4.9 percent, according to BuzzAngle’s report.

Chris McKay / GettyImages.com – Drake
Philips Arena, Atlanta, Ga.

In what should be no surprise to those reading Pollstar’s Elite 100 Artists chart, Drake was the artist of the year, with the top album (Views, 3.9 million total album units) and single of the year (“One Dance,” 5.6 million song consumption units).

While Drake had the most-streamed album of the year overall, Adele had the top-selling album, with her 25 claiming 1,550,584 album sales while Drake’s Views came in at No. 2 with 1,510,987.

Overall album sales were down 15.6 percent compared with 2015, while vinyl sales were up 25.9 percent, accounting for 8 percent of all physical sales. CD album sales were down 14 percent.

Pop was the top genre, with 14.6 percent of total album consumption, while dance was the top-growing genre, gaining 35 percent from 2015.

Hip-hop/rap was the top genre in terms of total song consumption, at 18.2 percent, and accounting for 30 percent of all streams.

A combined “rock” genre accounted for 22 percent of all streams.

BuzzAngle Music receives daily data from major retailers, hundreds of independent record stores, direct-to-fan sites, venue sales agents, digital streamers, and the leading radio airplay tracking services.

Its data is incorporated into Pollstar’s Elite 100 Artists chart, which tracks the top artists of the week based on streams, album sales and song sales.