US market monitor Luminate has published its Midyear Music Report, for H1 2024, which you can download here.
It reveals H1 music consumption stats from the US and globally, and highlights listening trends across the business.
Globally, according to Luminate, total on-demand audio streams rose 15.1% YoY to 2.29 trillion (see below).
In the world’s largest recorded music market, the United States, on-demand audio streams grew 8% to reach 665.8 billion (see below).
Total Album Consumption (TAC) of all music in the United States in H1 rose 7.4% to 527.3 million album-sale-equivalent units.
Luminate’s ‘Total Album Consumption’ (TAC) metric combines all on-demand track streams, plus all track downloads, plus all album sales on digital and physical formats.
The formula for ‘TAC’ equates 1,250 premium streams, or 3,750 ad-supported streams, to one album ‘sale’ .
It also equates 10 digital track purchases/downloads to one album ‘sale’.
Physical album sales in the United States (including vinyl LP, CDs and Cassettes), meanwhile, grew 3.8% to 24.7 million in H1.
Luminate notes that independent retail physical sales are not included in its H1 2024 vs. H1 2023 US physical sales reporting.
Luminate announced that it would be retiring its weighted model for calculating physical sales at the beginning of the year. In April, Luminate announced a partnership with music data company StreetPulse to receive daily sales metrics directly from stores.
Within its Midyear report, Luminate noted that it “changed the methodology behind its independent retail sales reporting beginning Week 1 of 2024” and that “while the new modeled methodology more accurately represents the independent retail market, we do not have comparable historical data to provide an accurate year-over-year trend”.
According to Luminate, in weeks 23-26, under its “new US independent retail modeling”, independent record stores account for 29.5% of all physical album sales in the US and independent record stores account for 40.1% of all vinyl sales in the US during this same time.
According to Luminate’s Midyear report, of the 527.3 million album-sale-equivalent (TAC) units recorded in the US in H1 2024, 384.1 million, or 72.8%, were registered as ‘Catalog music’.
This means that ‘Current’ Music’s share of Total Album Consumption in the United States in the first half of 2024 was 27.2%, or 143.2 million TAC units. (Luminate noted that these stats exclude indie retail sales data.)
While the popularity of ‘Current’ music grew by 7.1% in the US in H1 2024, the popularity of ‘Catalog’ music grew 7.5%, according to Luminate’s report (see below).
Luminate defines ‘Current’ as anything released in the 18 months prior to it getting streamed/downloaded/purchased.
Anything older than 18 months when it’s streamed/downloaded/purchased is defined as ‘Catalog’. Luminte also defines anything older than 60 months when it’s streamed/downloaded/purchased as ‘Deep Catalog’.
Luminate reports that in the first half of 2024, the Latin genre had the most ‘Current Streams’, while R&B/Hip-Hop genre had the most Catalog Streams (music that has a release age of 18-60 months).
Rock had the most Deep Catalog Streams (music that’s been released longer than 60 months)
Elsewhere, Luminate reported that Benson Boone’s Beautiful Things registered 1.434 billion On-Demand Audio Streams globally (see below) to top the Top 10 Songs (Global) chart (ranked by overall on-demand audio streaming volume).
At No.2 on the chart, Teddy Swims’ hit Lose Control registered 1.117 billion On-Demand Audio Streams globally in the first half of the year, followed by Taylor Swift’s Cruel Summer (No.3), with 1.012 billion on-demand audio streams globally.
The Top 10 of Luminate’s 2024 Mid-Year ‘Top Albums US’ chart (Album + TEA + On-Demand SEA + Video) is topped by Taylor Swift’sThe Tortured Poets Department with 4.660 million total album equivalent consumption units.
The album generated 2.753 billion on-demand audio streams in the US, and 2.474 million album sales, according to Luminate (see below).
At No.2, meanwhile, Morgan Wallen’s One Thing At A Time achieved 1.776 million album equivalent units in H1 2024. The album generated 2.237 billion on-demand audio streams, and 41,000 album sales in the first half of the year.
At No.3, Noah Kahan’s Stick Season registered 1.224 million album-equivalent units in the US in H1. The album generated 1.436 billion on-demand audio streams and 114,000 album sales.
