Report: Music Streaming Continues To Grow, But Slower

Ariana Grande, Lil Nas X, Billie Eilish, Post Malone and Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s soundtrack for A Star Is Born were some of the big winners of this year’s Nielsen Music mid-year report, which tracked U.S. music consumption between Jan. 4 and June 20, 2019.

According to Billboard, the report shows overall equivalent album units increased by 13% and total on-demand streams exceeded 507.7 billion -- 333.5 billion of which were audio streams and 174.2 billion were video plays, up 27.8% and 39.6% from 2018, respectively. As expected, streaming continued to increase while physical sales continued to decline. Meanwhile, R&B/hip-hop grew in dominance as it accounted for 26.5% of U.S. business thanks to such top-charting artists as Lis Nas X, Post Malone, Khalid and Juice WRLD.

On-demand streaming grew 31.6% over the same period in 2018 -- 507.66 billion streams versus 387.75 billion -- but that growth is at a slower pace than last year: In 2018’s mid-year report, Nielsen Music tracked a 47% increase year-over-year from 2017. This suggests hints at a new trend to watch: while streaming continues to increase in the U.S., that rate of growth is liable to slow as the user base edges towards its saturation point.