Streaming services account for 75% of all music listening in 2018, up from 50% in 2016
Anyone who knows anything about today's music culture knows that streaming is the preferred form of music consumption. But on Friday, figures from Nielsen showed how far streaming come in the span of two to three years.
The Mid-Year Music Report revealed that in the first half of 2018, Americans streamed 403 billion songs, via both video and audio services. That's almost 100 billion songs more than what they streamed in all of 2015, when streaming accounted for as much as half of US music revenue. Comparing apples to apples, as this chart from Statista does, streaming accounted for 25% more of the United States' total music consumption in the first half of 2018 than it did during the same period of time in 2016.
In fact, streaming accounted for three times as much of American music consumption in the first half of 2018, as physical album sales, digital album sales, and digital track sales combined.
