Morgan Wallen isn’t just dominating the Billboard charts in 2023 — he’s also leading a massive spike in the genre’s listenership.
An example" One out of every 10 country tracks streamed so far this year has been by the Big Loud/Republic artist, reports Billboard.
Propelled by Wallen, country music consumption in the United States is up 20.3% year-over-year in the first 26 weeks of 2023, according to Luminate. That’s a huge improvement from the 2.5% growth the genre experienced over the same period in 2022; only K-pop (up 46.2%) and Latin (up 20.6%) have grown more so far this year. With the entire on-demand streaming market up 15% over the first six months of the year, rock (up 11.4%), pop (up 7.6%) and R&B/hip-hop (up 4.9%) lag far behind in terms of growth but still dominate overall market share (25.3% for pop, 24.7% for R&B/hip-hop and 20.1% for rock).
Wallen, who is currently on a sold-out stadium tour, is the single biggest driver in the increase. He alone accounted for 40% of the growth in country consumption this year. Through week 26, Wallen has moved 4.9 million equivalent album units (EAUs), representing 10.4% of all country consumption. (EAUs combine album sales with track sales and streams converted into equivalent album units.) That’s more than double his 4.4% share in the prior-year period. In addition to One Thing at a Time’s dominance, the album’s third single, “Last Night,” remains at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart for the 13th week.
As Billboard has reported, a new crop of male country artists including Zach Bryan, Bailey Zimmerman, Jelly Roll and Nate Smith are fueling a fresh wave of success for the genre — and the numbers bear that out. Wallen and fellow superstar Luke Combs, along with Bryan and Zimmerman, account for 69% of country music’s year-to-date consumption growth.
Total country consumption through week 26 (the tracking week ended June 29) was 46.7 million EAUs. That tally is around 7.9 million EAUs higher than the same 26-week period in 2022.
While Wallen had the biggest impact on country’s year-over-year improvement in terms of growth, other young artists also made a major impression. Bryan and Combs accounted for 11.2% and 10.6% of country’s consumption growth, respectively, while Zimmerman represented 7.2% of the improvement. Older country stars — Chris Stapleton, Jason Aldean, Kane Brown — were also top 10 artists by share of consumption, but their 2023 numbers were essentially unchanged from 2022.
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