Overall Music Consumption-Led By Growth In On-Demand Streaming-Help Power A 14% Lift From Last Year

Nielsen Entertainment releases the 2015 Nielsen Music U.S. mid-year report for the 6-month period of December 29, 2014 through June 28, 2015.
* The growth of Streaming continues to accelerate in 2015, with over 135 billion songs streamed on-demand through audio and video platforms.
* Powered by a growth in Streaming, overall Digital consumption (sales and streams) are up 23%.
* Total consumption for the year, based on Albums plus Track Equivalent Albums and Streaming Equivalent Albums, is up 14% over last year.
* Vinyl sales now comprise nearly 9% of physical album sales.
* Digital Albums are virtually flat compared to last year, while Digital Tracks are down 10%.
* Except for continued record-setting strength in Vinyl LPs, which are up 38% to 5.6 million units, physical album sales are down 7%.

2015 MID-YEAR HIGHLIGHTS AND ANALYSIS
* On-Demand Streaming is up 92.4% over mid-year 2014, with Video On-Demand streaming leading the way (+109%) and Audio On-Demand Streaming also experiencing significant growth (+74%).
* There are seven albums that have sold more than 600K units so far this year, while there were only four at this time last year.
* Taylor Swift’s 1989 is the best-selling, and most consumed, album of the year. Four (digital) songs are in the top 25, with each selling over 1M units. Despite very limited On-Demand Audio streaming, she leads the overall chart for this year with over 2M album equivalents in the first six months of 2015. Swift also has the best-selling CD and best-selling vinyl LP of the year and has the 2nd best-selling digital album of the year, behind Drake/If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late.
* Digital albums are showing some resiliency this year, after finishing down nearly 10% in 2014, due to some strength of new-releases led by Drake/If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late.

Source: Nielsen