2017 BuzzAngle U.S. Music Consumption Report Highlights

Albums:

• The top album of 2017 was ÷ by Ed Sheeran with 2,645,600 total project consumption units.
• There were only two albums to break 1 million pure album sales during 2017: top-selling album of the year, reputation by Taylor Swift, with 1,899,772 sales and ÷ by Ed Sheeran with1,042,255 album sales.
• The top-selling vinyl album of the year was Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Mix V. 1 with 64,175 sales.
• The top digital album of 2017 was reputation by Taylor Swift with 865,446digital sales.

Streaming Activity

• In 2017, one song broke the one billion-stream mark for the first time ever, Despacito by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee (1.1 billion streams) and was also the most streamed song of the year.  Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You was the second most streamed song with 979.3 million streams.  The previous record was held by Panda by Desiigner which had 736.8 million streams in 2016.
• HUMBLE. by Kendrick Lamar was the most audio-streamed song in 2017 with more than 555.2 million streams.
• Despacito by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee was also the most video-streamed song in 2017 with 594,059,722 million streams.
• There were 16 songs that were streamed more than 500 million times in 2017, compared to six in 2016 and two in 2015.
• There were 383 songs that streamed more than 100 million times in 2017 compared to 226 songs in 2016 and 111 songs in 2015.
• The top 1,000 streamed songs in 2017 accounted for 122.2 billion streams, an increase of 33% over 2016’s top 1,000 streamed songs (91.8 billion).
• Consistent with last year, 70%+ of the top 1,000 streamed songs in 2017 were either in the Urban or Pop genre.
• 50% of the top 1,000 streamed songs were Urban songs (Rap/Hip-Hop at 40% and R&B at 10%).
• Drake was the most streamed artist with 6 billion streams in 2017.  This is the second year in a row that Drake broke 6 billion streams in one year.  He is the only artist to have more than 6 billion in one year.  The next closest was Future with 4.2 billion streams.

 Song Sales:

• There were two songs that had more than two million song downloads in 2017 compared to five in 2016 and 16 in 2015.
• There were only 14 songs that sold more than one million song downloads in 2017 compared to 36 in 2016 and 60 songs in 2015.
• Shape of You by Ed Sheeran was the most downloaded song in 2017 with2,653,251 sales. (roughly 150,000 more downloads than last years most downloaded song Can’t Stop the Feeling! by Justin Timberlake).
• The top 1,000 song sales accounted for 170.9 million sales; down 30% over 2016’s top 1,000 songs (243 million sales).

Industry Trends – Genre

• The Rock genre (22.2% of total) was the top genre in terms of total album consumption, Rap/Hip-Hop and Pop followed with 17.5% and 17.2% respectively. Latin was the top-growing genre, gaining 23% versus 2016.
• Once again, Hip-Hop/Rap (20.9%) was the top genre in terms of total song consumption, with Rock close behind with 19.8% share.
• Consistent with 2016, Urban songs (Hip-Hop/Rap and R&B) were the most streamed songs in 2017 accounting for 32% of all streams.  19.3% were from titles in the Rock genre (including Rock, Alternative, Metal, Indie Rock, Punk) and 15.6% were Pop songs.
• 29.3% of all album sales in 2017 were from the Rock genre with more than 43 million sales.  19.7% were Pop titles, 14.1% were Urban albums (Hip-Hop/Rap and R&B) and 12% were Country albums.
• 54% of vinyl albums sold in 2017 were from the Rock genre.   14.4% were Pop titles and 13.4% were Urban titles.
• 23% of song sales in 2017 were titles from the Rock genre, 22.2% were Urban songs, 21.9% were Pop and 12.6% were Country songs.

Industry Trends – Release Period

• Deep Catalog titles, those released more than three years ago, accounted for 51% of all album sales in 2017 and 54% for physical album sales.  For vinyl sales that figure jumps to 63% and for video streams, it is 59%.
• New titles, less than eight weeks old, represented only 9% of all streams, but more than 21% of album sales.

Industry Trends – Day of Week

• Friday was the day with the most album sales (19.7% of the total) as well as both digital (22.1%) and physical album sales (17.84%).
• Thursday was the day of the week that saw the largest increase in album sales compared to 2016, going from 13.08% to 13.57% of the total in 2017.
• Consistent to last year, Friday and Saturday were the days with the most vinyl album sales, each at 16.36% (1.4 million in sales) and 16.17% respectively.
• Vinyl album sales experienced a unit increase of 24% on Wednesday’s compared to 2016.
• Friday was the day for the most audio streaming activity (15.3% of the total), while Saturday was the day for the most video streams (16.4% of the total).
• Audio streaming saw the largest unit growth on Sunday (56%) while video streaming experienced the largest unit growth on Saturday (25%).

Largest Single Days or Weeks of the Year for Music Purchasing and Listening

Streaming Activity:

• Total on-demand streams broke the two billion mark for a single day for the first time on April 21, 2017.
• The single day for the most total on-demand streams in 2017 was Christmas Eve, December 24 with 2,219,827,740 streams.
• Christmas Eve, December 24th was also day for most video streams in 2017, with 972,100,352 video streams which also marks the first-time video streams broke 900 million for a single day.
• Audio on-demand streams broke the one billion mark on a single day for the first time on February 3, 2017, with 1.01 billion.
• The daily average number of audio on-demand streams in 2017 was 1,057,218,000.
• The single day for the most audio on-demand streams in 2017 was December 15 with 1,383,099,642 streams.
• The week of January 27 was the first time that the combined audio and video streams surpassed 10 billion.  The weekly average for combined audio and video streams in 2017 was 11.45 billion.
• The week of December 15th was the largest streaming week of the year with a combined audio/video total of 14.2 billion.  This same week marked the first-time total streams reached 14 billion for a single week.

Album Sales: