Music streaming services overtake video sites in the US

Image: Drake Hotline Bling clip has received over 826M views on YouTube

The push over the last few years by recording labels to steer customers away from free video sites to subscription streaming sites has turned a significant corner in the United States.

The music streaming market grew by 58% in the US in the first six months of 2016 – making services as Spotify and Apple Music more popular for the first time with 114 billion streams.

In comparison, video sites as YouTube, Vevo and Dailymotion delivered 95 billion streams, a 23% rise year on year. This is a major triumph for the recording industry: after all, YouTube alone has 1 billion users around the world.

The audio streaming market by itself was up 107.8%. This is something the recording industry will take into consideration when it begins to negotiate new licensing deals with YouTube over the next few months.

These were the findings of market monitor BuzzAngle. Its report is here.

BuzzAngle cites this surge to audio to superstars as Drake, Beyonce, Rihanna and Adele making their records available on music streaming. Drake’s Views is the most requested album, with 1.5 billion streams since its release in April. Views is also the most-purchased album of the year so far, tallying 1.2 million sales on CD and download in the US.

The surge in popularity was largely driven by the availability of albums by Beyonce, Rihanna and Drake. Rihanna’s Work is the most-streamed song of 2016 in the U.S, for example, while Drake’s Views is the most requested album, being streamed 1.5 billion times since its release in April.

Adele’s album 25 was not available to stream for seven months after it was released, yet figures show that it was streamed 168 million times in the first six days following its streaming debut on June 24.

Following Views, the most streamed album between January and June 2016 is Justin Bieber’s Purpose (1.3 billion), Rihanna’s Anti (1.2 billion), Bryson Tiller’s Trapsoul (896.1 million) and Kevin Gates’ Islah (728.3 million).

The rise of streaming saw the US music market grow by 6.5%, despite CD sales plunging further by 11% and digital sales by 17%. Vinyl went up to 17% to 3.1 million.

The shift to audio streaming has been a boon for hip hop/rap and R&B.

Of albums, pop had 14.3% of the share, followed by hip hop/rap, R&B, rock and country.

In terms of singles, hip hop/rap lead with 16.9%, followed by pop (15.1%), R&B (11%), rock (8.2#%) and country (8%).