BuzzAngle Music has released its first-ever year-end music industry report, compiling data on music consumption during 2016. According to the report, overall consumption rose 4.9 percent over 2015, marking the second year in a row of growth. In total, there were 413.9 million project units in 2016 vs. 394.5 million album project units in 2015. Song consumption was also up 27.2 percent over 2015 (2.4 million song project units in 2016 vs. 1.9 billion song project units in 2015). Audio streams reached a new record high of 250.7 billion, up 82.6 percent over 2015. Also, subscription streams grew an impressive 124.2 percent and accounted for 76.3 percent of total audio streams in 2016, up from 62.1 percent of total in 2015.
BuzzAngle Music reports that there were more streams on any given day during 2016 (daily average of 1.2 billion) then there were song downloads for the entire year (734 million). Drake dominated the music consumption last year, with over 6.1 million in total album consumption units, his album Views is the album of the year with 3.9 million total album units and “One Dance” is the song of the year with 5.6 million total song consumption units.
Over 28 million unique songs were streamed in 2016, 7.3 million unique songs were purchased and 1.4 million unique albums were purchased. However, while streaming was way up, all types of music purchasing (aside from vinyl) declined last year. Overall album sales were down 15.6 percent compared to 2015 (173.4 million in 2016 vs. 205.4 million in 2015). Digital album sales in 2016 were down over the previous year 19.4 percent (83.9 million in 2016 vs. 104.1 million in 2015). Physical album sales were down 11.7 percent (89.4 million in 2016 vs. 103.1 million in 2015). Physical album sales accounted for 51.6 percent of all album sales in 2016. Vinyl album sales were up 25.9 percent over 2015 while CD album sales were down 14 percent. Vinyl albums accounted for eight percent of all physical album sales. Song sales (downloads) in 2016 were down 24.8 percent compared to 2015 (734.2 million in 2016 vs. 975.8 million in 2015).
