Nielsen reports impressive growth in music streaming during the first half of 2015 in the USA

Nielsen Soundscan has revealed the Q1 figures for the US recorded music market and there is both good and bad news. 

On the one hand, download sales continued their nosedive with a 10.4% drop to 531.6 million units. On the other, the decline of albums stalled as they only dropped 4%, a smaller decline than seen for the previous three years. 

However, the real news is clearly the monumental increase in the number of tracks being streamed through legal streaming services. 

Audio-only streaming services generated over 58 billion streams, which is a staggering 70% increase over 2014. Video streams did even better, with a 109% growth over 2014 and 76.6 billion views. 

Taylor Swift continued to dominate sales in 2015 as her album 1989 sold 1.33 million copies, a number that grows to over 2 million albums when Album Equivalent Units are taken into consideration. 

However, Album Equivalent Units are quickly losing out to Streaming Equivalent Albums, the former corresponding to 53 million and the latter to 90 million units. It is clear where the consumption trends are heading and this is not bad news as it means that albums will continue to have an important place in the streaming ecosystem. 

UMG has increased its lead over the other two majors securing a market share of 39.4%, making it increasingly obvious that no streaming service can launch without licensing its catalogue. 

The Nielsen report does not deal with revenues, so it will be necessary to wait a while longer to understand what the impact of streaming is on the industry and if - like in the UK - it is finally starting to offset the decline in other areas.

 

(Andrea Leonelli)