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Nearly a quarter more music was listened to online in America in 2018

3 minute read | January 2018

Drake tops the U.S. stream list: “God’s Plan”. number has been played one and a half billion times

Budapest, January 10, 2018 – In the United States, sales of the album equivalent unit 1 increased by 23% in 2018, an increase of 49% over the previous year, with 661 billion streamed songs. The leading on-demand track, with more than one and a half billion streams from God’s Plan Drake (this includes audio and video versions). The songs are sold by Ed Sheeran Perfect. leads by 1.3 billion downloads, according to a year-end summary survey by Nielsen Music. The female performers and soundtracks also closed out a good year.

The American public’s love of music is growing steeply: on-demand video clips and music play has exceeded 900 billion plays, up 43 percent from 2017. The renaissance of vinyl records is also unbroken: 15% more black discs have been sold out. Digital music purchases – which include digital albums, track-equivalent tracks (so-called track equivalent albums) and on-demand streamed albums – increased by more than a third in 2018.

Four songs crossed the $ 1 billion stream: Drake: God’s Plan, Juice WRLD: Lucid Dreams (Forget Me), Drake: In My Feelings, and XXXtentacion Sad.

“Music consumption has lost all momentum: demand for paid music content grew by almost half in 2018,” said David Bakula, Nielsen Music’s vice president of research. “The engine for record growth is provided by the new smart speakers and their associated gadgets, which have virtually put music consumption on a comet’s path. With the rise of super-fast and stable 5G, we expect consumption to continue to grow across all channels and platforms, favoring continued online music consumption in 2019 and beyond. In this way, music retains its leading role among the entertainment genres. ”

Nielsen’s research has also outlined the key trends that will determine the year 2018.With Luis Fonsi’s hit Despacito, bilingual success stories are constantly at the forefront of playlists. Mixed-language numbers take on more and more big milestones, such as Cardi B, Bad Bunny, and J. Balvin: I Like It. song, which was streamed 873 million times online and played 531,000 times on radio in 2018. The second most popular bilingual hit was Taki Taki’s DJ Snake, Selena Gomez, Ozuna & Cardi B with nearly 300 million on-demand plays, while the third place went to Bad Bunny & Drake’s MIA (235 million on-demand online plays).

2018 was clearly Drake’s year: it broke all existing records when it came to listening to music online. Scorpion c. 742.92 million of the mega-successful album was sold in the week of its release, far behind the previous record-breaking album Post Malone beerbongs & bentleys, which “only” 431 million were curious about in the first seven days.

2018 was also a success for female performers in the United States: they also doubled their on-demand power by doubling their hit list presence. Cardi B, Camila Cabello and Ariana Grande have hired themselves at the top of the Billboard charts for weeks. Moreover, with the release of Cardi B’s album Invasion of Privacy, she broke a record among solo female performers: 202 million streamed her music in the week of its release.

2018 has resulted in an unprecedented boom in the genre of blockbusters. Even the Queen benefited from the moonlight effect: the Bohemian Rhapsody. thanks to the film, the band also returned to the Billboard 100 and 200 charts after 39 years, and the title track entered the top 100 for the first time in the history of light music in three different decades. The biggest showman c. the film premiered in 2017, yet its soundtrack is the only one that sold more than a million copies last year (one and a half million).

Comment

The term album equivalent unit is the aggregate screen term for digital and physical audio media, which also covers the downloading and streaming of album-equivalent songs. Consumption equivalent to an album does not include tracks played on terrestrial and digital radios.

1 one unit corresponds to 1,500 streamed songs

CONTACT:

Karafiáth Mettametta.karafiath@nielsen.com+36309625480