Hip-hop’s dominance of streaming in the United States has continued in 2019 – but new stats suggest its lead over other genres isn’t quite as commanding as it was this time last year.
New data revealed in Nielsen’s Mid-Year music report today (June 27) shows that tracks categorized under ‘R&B/hip-hop’ racked up 29.6% of all on-demand streams in the States (across both video and audio services) in the 24 weeks from Jan 4 – June 20.
That was down on the 36.4% market share the R&B/hip-hop category registered in the equivalent period of 2018.
However, the likes of Rock (down from 17.7% to 14.0%), Pop (15.7% to 13.5%), Country (7.1% to 5.8%) and Latin (10.0% to 7.3%) also all lost year-on-year market share in H1 2019.
R&B/hip-hop held a 37.5% market share of audio on-demand US streams in H1 2018, according to Nielsen, but this fell to 29.8% in H1 2019.
Overall, total on-demand streams (audio plus video) in the United States reached 507.7bn in the first half of this year – up 31.6% year-on-year.
Audio streams alone hit 333.5bn in the period, up 27.8% year-on-year, but this growth was smaller than that seen in H1 2018.
Video streaming showed stronger growth in H1 2019, up 39.6% year-on-year to 174.2bn.
Below, you can see how genres fared across all genres in 2018 versus 2019, according to Nielsen’s report, which you can download through here.
2018
2019
According to Nielsen’s report, the biggest artist in terms of all consumption (streaming and sales) in the US in the first half of 2019 was Ariana Grande, followed by Drake, Billie Eilish, Post Malone and Queen.
Drake (pictured) was the biggest artist in terms of audio streams alone, with 2.66bn on-demand plays in H1 2019.Music Business Worldwide
