YouTube Loses US Music Streaming Dominance As Subscription Plays Jump 124%


People paying for the likes of Spotify and Apple Music played more music streams in the US last year than users of YouTube � in a dramatic market reversal.

That�s according to the latest data from trusted market monitor BuzzAngle � whose stats show that digital video music streams grew by just 7.5% in the year.

By contrast, audio on-demand services saw streams on their platforms grow by a whopping 82.6% � from 137.29bn in 2015 to 250.73bn in 2016.

That was enough to comfortably overtake digital video, which attracted 181.31bn music streams in 2015, up 7.5% on 168.59bn in 2015.

(Obviously, two related players completely dominate this field. So for �digital video� you can largely read �YouTube and Vevo�. And before you ask� BuzzAngle�s tally includes both premium content and identified tracks attached to YouTube user-generated-content.)

Ad-funded on-demand streaming volume only grew 14.3%, up to 59.36bn from 51.96bn year-on-year.

Ad-funded on-demand streaming volume only grew 14.3%, up to 59.36bn from 51.96bn year-on-year.

The biggest story in the market was on-demand audio subscription streaming.

According to BuzzAngle, paid-for streams in 2016 bounded up 124.3% � attracting 191.36bn plays in total.

That meant, for the first time ever, there were more music streams played by US users of on-demand audio services than there were on digital video platforms like YouTube � nearly 70bn more.

The traditional sales market behaved a little more as expected.

As you can see below, total sales of albums in the US declined 15.6% to 173.4m � dropping below the 200m mark for the first time in recent memory.

This fall was mainly due to digital albums dropping 19.4% to 104.1m. Meanwhile, physical album sales dropped 11.7% to 89.4m.

Although digital remains the US consumer�s favoured albums format, physical increased its share of the market in 2016.

As for single-track downloads, these plummeted 24.8%, down to 734.2m.

Vinyl album sales increased 25.9% to 7.19m in the year, enough to claim just over 4% of the total albums market.

 BuzzAngle uses an �total album project� metric to measure the US market across formats � which equates album �sales� in the download world as ten song sales, and in the streaming world as 1,500 plays.

In its annual report � which you can read in full through here �  it estimates that the US market�s music consumption (on this �project� basis) grew 4.2% in 2016.


Ingham, Tim. "YouTube loses US music streaming dominance as subscription plays jump 124%." Music Business Worldwide. http://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/youtube-loses-us-music-streaming-dominance-as-subscription-plays-jump-124/.

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