Musicians and industry professionals have a well-documented obsession with chart placement. However, now in the dawn of streaming, there’s a growing pressure to deliver in other analytical ways, including streaming numbers. With physical albums sales continuing to fall, artists like Billie Eilish, Drake, and Ed Sheeran have all dominated across streaming platforms.
Although, traditional music medium such as vinyls seeing a huge spike in popularity, with artist like Taylor Swift and Adele (much to the displeasure of independent artists) including it in their album rollouts, streaming remains in the top spot of music activity. In fact, according to Luminate, the entertainment and data insight company behind Billboard‘s chart tracking, “on-demand song streams (audio and video combined) increased 12.2% to 1.268 trillion,” marking “the first time that yearly U.S. on-demand audio streams surpassed 1 trillion.”
Overall U.S. on-demand song streams (audio and video combined) increased 12.2% to 1.268 trillion, according to @luminate_data‘s 2022 year-end report.
This is the first time that yearly U.S. on-demand audio streams surpassed 1 trillion.
— billboard charts (@billboardcharts) January 11, 2023
The report revealed that “29% of all on-demand audio streams in the U.S. in 2022 were R&B/hip-hop songs.” No further information was provided for what role other genres play in this milestone.
29% of all on-demand audio streams in the U.S. in 2022 were R&B/hip-hop songs.
— billboard charts (@billboardcharts) January 11, 2023
Digital streaming platforms have like Apple Music and Spotify have continued to introduced new features to increase users’ app usage. Last year, Apple Music introduced Apple Music Sing, which gives subscribers an elevated experience with their favorite songs through enhanced karaoke abilities. While, Spotify expanded their Spotify Wrapped data points to include mood breakdowns and personality points of users most popular songs.
