January 16, 2020 by A.S. Van Dorston

It’s ironic that the cover of this year’s Nielsen Music Year-End Music Report features a photo of a live concert. Because they did not provide any information about live concert sales. Perhaps Billboard will have a separate report for that. For the record, Elton John was the top draw in North America at $1,155,510, followed by Trans-Siberian Orchestra ($1,022,740), Bob Seger, Garth Brooks, KISS, The Rolling Stones, Eric Church, Florida Georgia Line, Zac Brown Band, Travis Scott, Shawn Mendes, Thomas Rett, New Kids On The Block, Hootie & The Blowfish and Backstreet Boys. I’d love to see stats on tours focused on venues smaller than stadiums and European festivals. I know that concerts in Germany was up 31% in 2018 to 5 billion euro. If someone has a Billboard Pro subscription, I’m sure they could provide more interesting data.

At any rate, after two decades of painful transition in music format consumption, thanks mainly to the greedy, whiny music industry, people did not just throw their hands up in disgust and say, “F**k music, ima watch reality TV and listen to true crime podcasts only for now on.” Well that did happen for some people, but most people who are not yet completely dead inside, and even those, like me, who are, still want music. And we’re still willing to pay for it. I mean, what’s $10 to $50 a month in streaming, downloads, an occasional record/CD or live show, compared to our damn $200+ in cable/Internet/Netflix and all the other video streaming services?

Total Album Consumption up 15% to 785M.
Digital Only Album Consumption up 19.4% to 711.5M

Can we please stop saying the album is dead now? Yes, people are moving from purchasing to streaming. Same thing happened with movies from VHS/DVD/Blu-Ray to streaming. No one’s saying movies are dead.

The report did not mention this, but the average number of albums released each year went up through the decade by about 150%, from 40,000 per year to over 100,000 per year. That’s a lot of albums. If the average length is about 45 minutes, it would take 8 and a half years to hear them all just from last year. Clearly an album of songs that roughly take the time of medium length opening live set is more relevant than ever. Most people don’t want to see an artist who only has one or two good songs.

On-Demand Streaming, Audio & Video, up 29.3% to 1.15 TRILLION

Clearly someone is making big bucks, and I expect there will be a lot of struggle for artists who aren’t Post Malone and Taylor Swift to get their fair share. Artists who refrain from streaming in order to sell a handful more copies of their vinyl LPs are also clearly missing out on the potential for much larger audiences.

Physical & Digital Album Sales down 18.7% to 112.7M

At some point there will be a backlash against streaming and sales will continue to increase from download providers like Bandcamp. If you own your music, no one can decide you can’t listen to your favorite artist because they just pulled all their music from streaming services. I’m having trouble finding information on Bandcamp’s stats. Their last report seems to be their 2017 Year In Review, which had $270 million paid out to 600,000 artists, with digital album sales up 16%, tracks 33%, merch 36%, vinyl up 54%, and CDs 18%. Their home page currently states that fans paid artists $8.5 million in the last 30 days.

Vinyl LP Sales up 14.5% to 18.8M, representing 26% of physical sales, compared to CDs 75% at 54.8M.

LOL ancient formats. I wondered if 8 tracks and wax cylinders would also make a comeback, but no. At least vinyl is a unique experience, with the space-hogging sleeves and the diminished dynamics, pops and clicks. CDs at this point are redundant, since you get the same digital information from lossless rips and downloads. I still buy CDs from certain artists for the same reason I buy t-shirts, patches and stickers, to support the bands. But I am buying more from Bandcamp than ever, with most CDs being plush reissue packages with liner notes and bonus content.

Post Malone was the winner with two no. 1 singles and the year’s top-streamed album, followed by Billie Eilish, Lizzo and BTS.
The biggest viral hit by far was Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” which had 2.5 billion on-demand streams thanks partly to TikTok. Next biggest was Arizona Zervas at just 17 million
Music podcasting reaches 60% of ages 35-44.
Collaborations resulted in big increases in consumption (228% for Lil Nas X & Billy Ray Cyrus, 771 million streams for Shawn Mendes & Camila Cabello, 446 million for Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber.
Globally the top streaming service is YouTube, followed by Spotify and Amazon Music.
58% of listeners in Germany still listen to AM/FM radio as their preferred format, followed by Canada and UK (51%) and U.S. (44%). Japan’s audience is 46% music video websites and 45% CDs.
Queen was the top rock artist, followed by Beatles, Imagine Dragons, Panic! At the Disco and Twenty One Pilots. Post Malone, Drake, YoungBoy Never Broke Again, Khalid and Juice WRLD were top R&B/Hip-Hop artists. Other top artists were Luke Combs (Country) and Bad Bunny (Latin), .
While Post Malone’s Hollywood’s Bleeding was the top album overall, Taylor Swift’s Lover was number one in sales (1,085,000, digital and physical combined) not includijng streaming, followed by Billie Eilish (676K), Star Is Born Soundtrack (486K), Jonas Brothers (469K), Harry Styles (458K) BTS (454K) and Tool (388K). Eilish and Tool were #2 & 3 digital albums, while BTS and Eilish were #2 & 3 physical. Top vinyl album was Beatles’ Abbey Road.
Overal top genres in total volume were R&B/Hip-Hop (27.7%), Rock (19.8%), Pop (14%), Country (7.4%), Latin (5.3%) and Dance/Electronic (3.6%).
Top Mainstream Rock Radio Songs are really in love with the grunge era right now, including four by Nirvana, and the rest Alice In Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam, Offspring, Soundgarden and Metallica.
Top Alternaative Rock Radio Songs are Cold War Kids, “First,” AWOLNATION, “Sail,” and Arctic Monkeys, “Do I Wanna Know?”