Streams rose 15% and vinyl sales doubled in the first half of 2021 as Olivia Rodrigo’s “drivers license” and Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous: The Double Album lead song and album charts, respectively.
Olivia Rodrigo’s “drivers license” is the top song, while Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous leads the album chart
AS THE PANDEMIC ENDS, THE recorded-music business has continued to thrive: Overall, ondemand streams in the United States grew 10.8%, to 555.3 billion, in the first half of 2021 compared with the same period of 2020, according to MRC Data, with audio-only streams increasing 15% to nearly 483 billion. Globally, audio streams jumped 27.3% to 1.3 trillion.
Not all the good news is digital. Vinyl sales, which have grown for the past decade, more than doubled between January and June, up 108.2% to 19.2 million from 9.2 million in the first six months of last year. Even CD sales, which have been steadily declining, posted a modest 2.2% gain, to 18.9 million units. The only serious loss was in digital sales: Album downloads fell 26.8%, to 12.9 million, while track sales dropped 20.3%, to 101.8 million. But physical sales rose so much that, for the first time in years, total album sales increased, by 12.6% to 51.3 million.
So far, the top song of 2021 is
Olivia Rodrigo’s “drivers license,” with 582.8 million streams. (By comparison, Roddy Ricch’s “The Box” had been streamed 1.1 billion times during the first half of 2020.) The top album is Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous: The Double Album, with 2.1 million album consumption units.
Overall, U.S. album audio consumption units are up 14.4%, to 413.3 million, while overall consumption units (including video streams) are up 13.5% to 434.7 million.
Universal Music Group improved upon its industry-leading market share, as measured by distribution ownership, to 38.55% from 38.16% in the same period of 2020. The total market share of independent distributors, as measured by label ownership, also rose, to 36.46% from 35.85%, according to Billboard estimates.
R&B/hip-hop remained the top genre, with a 28.25% market share, down slightly from 28.44% in the first half of 2020, while rock rose by 1.1 percentage points to a 20.36% market share. Latin grew to a 5.28% market share, from 4.36%, and country and dance each rose slightly: the former to 8.21%, from 8.02%, and the latter to 3.39%, from 3.18%.
The only major genre that declined was pop, which dipped slightly to 12.89%,
from 13.28%.