Nielsen Music: Adele, Streaming Highlight 2015 With Overall Consumption Up 15%

Adele: Who Else?

Thank goodness for ADELE.

According to NIELSEN, Thanks to the U.K. diva's record-shattering "25" -- which was out for just six weeks at the end of 2015 -- overall music consumption was up 15%, with on-demand streaming leading the way, both audio (up 83%) and video (102%).  Overall streaming was up a whopping 93%, from 164.5 billion in 2014 to 317.2 billion in 2016.

Total Digital Music Consumption was up 26% (including TEA, SEA and downloads) from 326.4 million in 2014 to 411.3 million in 2015. Overall album sales (which includes physical sales as well as Track Equivalent and Streaming Equivalent sales) was up to 549.4 million, a 15.2% rise over 2014.

Catalog continues to be the biggest share of on-demand streams, with songs over 18 months old accounting for nearly 70% of all streaming volume.

Streaming Equivalent Albums (where 1,500 streams is equivalent to 1 album) comprised 38.5% of the total industry volume, up from 23% in 2014.

An all-time weekly record was set week-ending 12/24 with nearly 7.5 billion on-demand streams.

JUSTIN BIEBER set an all-time record for total audio on-demand streams in one week for an album when songs from "Purpose" had over 100 million on-demand audio streams in its release week (week-ending 11/19).

Vinyl LPs continued to set new all-time highs with nearly 12 million units sold in 2015, up an impressive 30% over the previous years, while CD sales continue to drop (down 10.8%) along with digital downloads (down 3%).

Independent record stores continue to be the biggest driver of vinyl LP sales, at over 45%, with Rock the biggest genre, representing 68% of the overall pie. Nearly 18% of all physical album sales for Rock were vinyl LPs in 2015, up from 13.4% in 2014.

Thanks to ADELE's "25" and TAYLOR SWIFT's "1989," Pop and R&B/Hip-Hop albums showed the most growth with a gain of 23%. CD sales for Pop records were up 21% vs. 2014 and Digital Album sales were up 22%.

R&B/Hip-Hop also showed growth in album sales, with DRAKE, THE WEEKND and KENDRICK LAMAR helping fuel an increase of 2% overall and 19% in digital album sales.

Rock continued to be the #1 genre for Album sales, with nearly 33% of all album sales, while 23% of track sales came from the Pop genre. When it comes to on-demand streaming, the dominant genre is R&B/Hip-Hop with over 21%.

ADELE, of course, was the year's biggest story, setting a record for weekly sales with her debut of 3.377 million units, setting another mark by accounting for more than 41% of the total for the week.

"25" also shattered the mark as the first title to ever scan over one million units in multiple
weeks when she accomplished that feat in her second week (week-ending 12/03), with 1.112 million album sales and then capped it off with an unprecedented third week with 1.157 million album sales during week ending 12/24.

"25" set a first-week record for digital album sales as well, with 1.644 million.

After only six weeks, "25" is already the 61st best-selling album in SOUNDSCAN history with over 7.4 million sales, representing 3.1% of all album sales for the year and 16.4% of all album sales during the six weeks since its release. Coupled with "21" and "19," total ADELE catalog sold eight million albums in 2015. It's the third time the U.K. pop diva has had the biggest-selling album of the year, "21" topping the chart in both 2011 and 2012, the first time an artist has ever done so.

"25" represented 16.4% of all digital Albums sold in the last six weeks of the year and 48% of all digital albums sold during its release week, and an amazing 26% of all albums sold at mass-merchant retailers in the six weeks since its release.

Other factoids: Rock was the leading genre, with 24.5% overall sales, followed by R&B/Hip-Hop (18.2%) and Pop (15.7%).

Overall Top 10 Albums of the Year (Physical, Digital, TEA, SEA): ADELE's "25," TAYLOR SWIFT's "1989," JUSTIN BIEBER's "Purpose," ED SHEERAN's "x," THE WEEKND's "Beauty Behind The Madness," DRAKE's "If You're Reading This, It's Too Late," MEGHAN TRAINOR's "Title," SAM SMITH's "In The Lonely Hour," SAM HUNT's "Montevallo" and FETTY WAP's "Fetty Wap."

MARK RONSON/BRUNO MARS' "Uptown Funk" led the Top Digital Songs category with 5.5 million, while FETTY WAP's "Trap Queen" led the Total On-Demand Streams category (Audio + Video) with 616 million combined streams.

Finally, Radio (AM/FM  and satellite) remains the #1 way people discover music, with 61% of the respondents, compared to 57% in 2014, while contemporary Pop is the most-listened-to format 18-34p with 12.4%, followed by Country (9.1%) and Hot AC (7.6%).

For the full report, go to www.nielsen.com.

« see more Net News