Drake, Post Malone Rule Mid-year charts Nielsen – Variety

Drake and Post Malone had the largest volume of on-demand streams and Ed Sheeran had the best song in Nielsen Music's half-yearly report for the six-month period ending June 28, 2018, released Friday morning. "The first half of 2018 has shown robust growth for the music industry, building on the company's successes in recent years," said David Bakula, vice-president of the music industry. President of Industry Insights for Nielsen Music, in a statement. "Fans have never had access to the music on the scale we see today, and we expect even more gains for the company. In the next six months. "

Total album consumption – which includes sales of physical and digital albums, sales and streaming of audio and video-on-demand songs – is in up 18%, exceeding 400 billion streams for the first time The volume of streaming audio on demand is up 45%, having already exceeded 268 billion so far in 2018, and the volume of streaming video on demand is up 35% from one year to the next, according to the report. (The report notes that the consumption total equivalent audio share of albums – albums + equivalent track albums (TEA) + equivalent audio-on-demand albums (AES) – is up 13.8% since the beginning of the year, while total consumption + TEA + audio / video-on-demand SEA – is up 18.4%.)

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Drake and Post Malone had the largest volume of audio streams on demand in the United States, with 3.3 billion and 3.1 billion, respectively, but higher album sales place Post Malone at the top of all artists in terms of total album consumption. Drake's "God's Plan" is the most important song of the year so far, in terms of total song consumption (sales of digital songs with an equivalent on-demand audio stream); It has recorded 5.3 million units, including 655 million audio streams on demand. He is followed by Post Malone's "Psycho" and BlocBoy JB's "Look Alive".

"Beerbongs & Bentleys" of Post Malone is this year's first album with a total of 1.8 million albums (albums + TEA) + SEA audio on demand), though this number is likely to be overshadowed by Drake's "Scorpion", which broke Malone's one-day streaming records when it was released last Friday, a day after the Nielsen. It is followed by "The Greatest Showman" soundtrack with 1.6 million units and "Invasion of Privacy" by Cardi B. with 1.1 million units.

Ed Sheeran leads all pop artists in mid-year, as her song "Perfect" is the most popular single pop for streaming and airplay radio broadcasts; it is also the most downloaded song of the year, with just over a million copies. Imagine Dragons has maintained three of the five most popular rock songs with "Thunder", "Believer" and "Whatever it Takes".

The report notes that three particular genres contributed to the year's earnings: Latin (+ 39% last year), R & B / Hip-Hop (+ 26%) and the Pop (+ 19%) all experienced an increase in total consumption of albums.

Latin reached 7.7% of the total volume of the industry (albums + TEA + SEA audio / video demand), up 6.5% at the same time last year. R & B / Hip-Hop continues its growth as the most consumed genre in the industry, with 31.2% of the total volume (album + TEA + SEA audio / video on demand). The genre of this genre, Rock, rose from 3.8% last year (28.6% vs. 24.8%) to a whopping 8.1% this year (31.2% vs. 23.1%). %). R & B / Hip-Hop now accounts for 36.4% of all song feeds and 37.5% of all audio song feeds this year.

Vinyl sales continue to climb at an impressive rate, up 19.2% from one year to the next. Other formats of album sales continue to decline, with CD sales down nearly 20% and digital album sales down 21.7%. Sales of digital tracks continue to fall faster than all other formats, with sales down 27.4%.