2016 U.S. music consumption by BuzzAngle

BuzzAngle Music are proud to release our first-ever yearly report, on 2016 U.S. music consumption. 2016 was another successful year in music, with overall consumption rising 4.2% over 2015, marking the second year in a row with solid growth.

The continued explosion of audio stream consumption, which increased 82.6% to 250B streams, fueled this increase. Both album sales and song sales continued to decline but the transition to these new access methods has shown to provide overall growth and a sustainable business model for the future. Breaking down the tremendous streaming growth shows what is perhaps the most important stat of the year: the percentage of subscription streams rose from 62% of the total in 2015 to 76% of the total in 2016. The number of 2016 subscription streams grew over 2.25x the 2015 subscription streams amount.

In addition to providing the industry with a great business model, streaming services offer music lovers a much wider selection of music at their fingertips. In 2016, there were over 28M unique songs played via a streaming service compared to 7M songs that were purchased. An average day’s audio-streaming volume in 2016 (1.2B) was much larger than the entire year’s volume of song sales (734M). More music is being listened to by more people than ever before.

The BuzzAngle 2016 U.S. music report is filled with stats on consumption, top artists, albums and songs, as well as a number of interesting and fun highlights. We hope you enjoy it and we welcome any feedback.

Best wishes for a healthy, happy and prosperous 2017!

Download the full report – BuzzAngle Music 2016 U.S. Report
There are loads of great data in the full report – here are just some of the highlights from 2016:
* Overall music consumption for the year was up 4.9% over 2015 (413.9 million project units in 2016 vs. 394.5 million album project units in 2015).
* Song Consumption for the year was up 27.2% over 2015 (2.4 million song project units in 2016 vs. 1.9 billion song project units in 2015).
* Audio streams reached a new record high of 250.7 billion, up 82.6% over 2015.
* Subscription streams grew a staggering 124.2% and accounted for 76.3% of total audio streams in 2016, up from 62.1% of total in 2015.
* There were more streams on any given day during 2016 (daily average of 1.2 billion) then there were song downloads for the entire year (734 million).
* Drake is the Artist of the Year with over 6.1 million in total album consumption units, Views is the album of the year with 3.9 million total album units and One Dance is the song of the year with 5.6 million total song consumption units.
* Over 28 million unique songs were streamed in 2016, 7.3 million unique songs were purchased and 1.4 million unique albums were purchased.
Overall album sales were down 15.6% compared to 2015 (173.4 million in 2016 vs. 205.4 million in 2015).
* Digital album sales in 2016 were down over the previous year 19.4% (83.9 million in 2016 vs. 104.1 million in 2015).
* Physical album sales were down 11.7% (89.4 million in 2016 vs. 103.1 million in 2015). Physical album sales accounted for 51.6% of all album sales in 2016.
* Vinyl album sales were up 25.9% over 2015 while CD album sales were down 14.0%. Vinyl albums accounted for 8.0% of all physical album sales.
* Song sales (downloads) in 2016 were down 24.8% compared to 2015 (734.2 million in 2016 vs. 975.8 million in 2015).

Source: BuzzAngle