BuzzAngle 2017 Report: Streaming, Ed Sheeran, Kendrick, Drake

It was a big year for streaming, which led the charge toward an overall growth of 12.8 percent in total music consumption for 2017 according to BuzzAngle Music’s 2017 report. 

Scott Legato / RockStarProPhotography.com – Ed Sheeran
Palace Of Auburn Hills, Auburn Hills, Mich.

Top artists include Ed Sheeran with the album of the year and most downloaded song, Kendrick Lamar with the most audio-streamed song of the year, and Drake as the most-streamed artist overall for a second year in a row. 

Overall consumption is up for a third consecutive year, as audio streaming exploded with a 50.3 increase to 377 billion streams, 127 billion more than 2016 according to the report. 

Click here to see the full BuzzAngle report.  

Subscription streams are now at 80 percent of total audio streams compared with last year’s 76 percent, suggesting the music business is monetizing streaming better than ever.

John Davisson – Kendrick Lamar
Okeechobee Music & Arts Festival, Sunshine Grove, Okeechobee, Fla.

Meanwhile, both album sales and song sales continued to decline, at 14.6 percent and 23.2 percent respectively. Vinyl sales continue to grow, with 20 percent over 2016 and accounting for 10 percent of all physical album sales.

The top album of 2017 was Ed Sheeran’s Divide with more than 2.6 million total project consumption units. 

Owen Sweeney – Future
Future brings it on at Royal Farms Arena in Baltimore Aug. 21.

His touring has been a monster as well. To say he’s been busy is a wild understatement, and he has 84 dates on the books taking him into the end of 2018 already.

For year end, Sheeran’s 2017 touring put him at No. 8 for the year with a whopping 111 shows. He grossed $124.1 million for the year and sold more than 1.5 million tickets.

And his plans for next year include multiple nights at stadiums including four at Wembley Stadium, three at Etihad Stadium in Manchester, four at Principality Stadium in Wales, 18 in Australia, eight in Ireland, and more U.S. stadiums toward the end of the year.

For 2017, only two albums broke the 1 million pure album sales mark during 2017 – Sheeran’s Divide (1.04 million) and Taylor Swift’s reputation (1.89 million). Taylor Swift keeps adding stadium dates to her 2018 plans.

Genre-wise, rock is still top in terms of album consumption with 22 percent of the total, followed by rap/hip-hop (17.5) and pop (17.2). However, Latin was the top-growing genre, gaining 24 percent from 2016.

For actual album sales, rock led at 29.3 percent, followed by pop at 19.7, urban at 14 percent, and country at 12 percent.

However, rap/hip-hop was tops for total song consumption at 20.9 percent, with rock close behind at 19.8.

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

A combined urban genre was the most-streamed, counting for 32 percent of all streams.   Consistent with last year, more than 70 percent of the top 1,000 streamed songs in 2017 were either in the Urban or Pop genre.

Total on-demand streams broke the 2 billion mark for a single day for the first time on April 21, 2017.  April is also when Kendrick Lamar dropped his DAMN. album to universal acclaim, and he had the most audio-streamed song of the year with “Humble” at more than 555.2 million streams. This year, 16 songs were streamed more than 500 million times, up from six in 2016 and just two in 2015.

Kung Fu Kenny reported 446,337 total tickets and grossed a whopping $40,562,179 for 2017. The average ticket price was $91, with an average gross of $1,267,568 per market appearance, though the multiple-night stints are weighted as one appearance. 

While Kendrick had the most audio-streamed song, the ubiquitous “Despacito” by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee was the overall most streamed song of the year when including video streams, at 1.1 billion – the first time one song has broken the 1 billion streams mark.

Drake was again the most-streamed artist with 6 billion streams (audio and video) in 2017, his second year of breaking the 6 billion mark in a year. He’s the only to have more than that total in a year. 

While Drake did not release a proper LP in 2017, he did release the More Life mixtape and dropped a handful of popular singles.

He toured extensively in Europe and Australia this year, after killing in North America last year.  Recent reports include 46,117 tickets sold over three nights at Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne, Australia, which grossed more than $5.2 million Nov. 18-20, and another three shows at AccorHotels Arena in Paris March 12-14, which sold  37,254 tickets and grossed more than $3.3 million.

The next closest was Future at 4.2 billion streams.

Future had big showings this summer at amphitheatres and arenas including 24,141 tickets sold June 3 at Roff Home Mortgage Music Center in Noblesville, Ind., which grossed $659,225 and June 2 at Hollywood Casino Amphiteatre in Maryland Heights, Mo., which sold 18,436 tickets and grossed $444,972. Those dates included a strong bill with Migos, Tory Lanez, and Kodak Black as support.