Music consumption is at an all-time high. Overall volume is up 3% over 2016, fueled by a 76% increase in on-demand audio streams, enough to offset declines in sales and return a positive year for the business. Nearly 650 solo artists, groups and collaborators appeared on the Top 200 Song Consumption chart in 2016, representing over 1,200 different songs. Source: Nielsen 2016 U.S. Music Year-End Report
Audio streams rose 76.4% to total 251.9 billion while video streams increased 7.5% to 179.9 billion. Nielsen calculates those on-demand stream figures from Spotify, YouTube, Apple, Google Play, Amazon, Rhapsody (now Napster), Tidal, SoundCloud, Xbox Music, Slacker, Medianet, AOL Radio, and Disciple.
Online streaming services increased in usage over the year. According to Nielsen, 80% of music listeners used one of those services in the last 12 months; in 2015, the rate was 75%. T
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Music discovery is usually an intriguing point in Nielsen’s data. AM/FM radio is the most popular discovery source at 44%. Online audio or video sites ranked fourth with 22%.
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
