Research firm BuzzAngle has published its 2018 Year-End Report for music consumption in the US – an interesting comparison to the UK figures we published yesterday.
The picture is one of strong growth: consumption (as in the UK: a blend of sales and streams) was up 16.2% in 2018, following a 12.8% rise in 2017. And yes, streaming was the key driver. “On-demand audio stream consumption continued to fuel the overall growth, increasing 41.8% to 534.6bn streams, up from 376.9bn streams last year,” reported BuzzAngle. “Total on-demand streams, including both audio and video, topped 809bn for the year. In the fourth quarter of 2018, a dominant 85% of all audio streams were subscription-based.” That last stat is certainly one to remember.
Meanwhile, BuzzAngle says that album and song sales declined by 18.2% and 28.8% respectively.
The figures for video, which were missing from the UK industry-body figures, are interesting too: BuzzAngle claims there were 274.9bn on-demand music-video streams in the US last year, up 24.3% year-on-year, and thus outpaced by the growth (41.8%) in audio streams.
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