According to the BuzzAngle Music 2018 US industry report, on-demand audio streams soared by 42% in 2018.
While the UK music business is hopeful of hitting 100 billion audio streams this year, the US market - still No.1 globally - is powering ahead with 534.6 billion on-demand audio streams, up from 376.9bn in 2017.
Hip-hop/rap was the top song genre for the third year running. Artists including Drake, Eminem, Travis Scott and Post Malone performed strongly.
Based on overall consumption, BuzzAngle named Drake as Artist of the Year; he was also behind the Album of the Year (Scorpion) and Song of the Year (God’s Plan)
Total on-demand streams set a new high in 2018 with 809.5bn streams, up 35% over the previous record in 2017 (598bn).
During Q4, subscription streams accounted for 85% of all on-demand audio streams (157.4bn). Subscription streams grew 50% during the fourth quarter.
However, there were only nine songs that were streamed more than 500 million times in 2018, compared to 16 in 2017.
The BuzzAngle report revealed that nearly two out of every three songs streamed in 2018 were titles released more than 18 months ago.
Vinyl album sales were up 12% in 2018 after seeing a 20% growth in 2017. Vinyl now accounts for 13.7% of all physical album sales.
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