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MUSIC AUDIO STREAMS JUST CROSSED THE 1 TRILLION MARK FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER IN A SINGLE YEAR IN THE US

DECEMBER 1, 2022, BY MURRAY Stassen, Music Business Worldwide

Harry Styles' As It Was has generated 558 million on-demand US audio streams in 2022

MBW’s Stat Of The Week is a series in which we highlight a single data point that deserves the attention of the global music industry. Stat Of the Week is supported by Cinq Music Group, a technology-driven record label, distribution, and rights management company.

Music audio streams in the US just crossed the one trillion mark for the first time ever in a single year.

That’s according to US market monitor Luminate (formerly MRC Data / Nielsen Music), which revealed that the 1 trillion mark was crossed in the US on Saturday (November 26).

That 1 trillion figure grew by 11.9 billion compared to 2021, when the full-year tally for music audio streams in the US was 988.1 billion, according to Luminate data.

That 1 trillion figure is also 7x larger than the number of music audio streams achieved in the US in 2015, when 142.9 billion were recorded in the world’s largest recorded music market, according to Luminate data (see below).

To put this year’s one trillion US music audio streams into context, Luminate notes that music listeners have spent roughly 960,000 years streaming music in the market in 2022.

Luminate also shared a bundle of other stats this week alongside that headline 1 trillion music audio stream figure for 2022, including the Top 5 most streamed songs of 2022 in the US (as of November 24, 2022)

Harry Styles’ As It Was came in at No.1 with 558 million on-demand US audio streams in 2022.

At No.2, Glass Animals’ Heat Waves generated 493 million on-demand US audio streams in 2022.

Future’s Wait For U generated 460 million on-demand U.S audio streams in 2022, coming in at No.3.

Kodak Black’s Super Gremlin (No.4) and Bad Bunny & Chencho Corleone’s Me Porto Bonito (No.5) generated 443 million and 425 million on-demand US audio streams in 2022, respectively.

Meanwhile, according to Luminate, during its release week (October 21 – October 27, 2022), songs from Taylor Swift’s latest album Midnights accounted for 1 out of 42 streams in all of the US.

Latin music had its highest streaming week ever in the US during the week of May 12, 2022, with 1.8 billion streams. As reported in May, this marked the first time that Latin music outstreamed Country music in the US in a single week and was largely due to the release of Bad Bunny’s now Grammy-nominated album Un Verano sin Ti.

Luminate also reports that streams for Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill were up +20,995% in the US during the week of May 27, 2022, after it appeared in a new episode of Netflix’s Stranger Things.

During the first half of 2022, according to Luminate, music audio streaming was up +24.7% around the world (across global territories).

The publication of Luminate’s new dataset around music audio streaming numbers in the US in 2022 comes two months after the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) published its 2022 Mid-Year Music Industry Revenue Report, which showed that streaming revenues grew 10%, from $5.9 billion in H1 2021 to $6.5 billion in the first half of 2022.

That revenue haul, which includes paid subscription services, ad-supported services, digital and customized radio, represented YoY growth, in revenue terms, of $600 million.

In the prior year period, however (H1 2021), US midyear Streaming Music revenues grew, in revenue terms, by $1.2 billion YoY to $5.9 billion.

Streaming Music’s share of total industry retail revenues was virtually flat in H1 2022, at 84%.