Music streaming surpassing downloads in US – Nielsen

4 Jul 2014

Streaming is overtaking downloading when it comes to digital music consumption, Nielsen’s U.S. music report for the first half of this year suggests.

The Nielsen Music 2014 Mid-Year US Report reveals a 42pc increase in on-demand streaming over the first half of 2013, resulting in 70bn plays in the first half of 2014.

In the meantime, sales of digital tracks dropped 13pc to 593.6m and album sales fell 11.6pc to 53.8m.

One reason for this increase in streaming is the rise of apps such as Spotify, in addition to video-sharing site YouYube having been a solid provider of music streaming.

The likes of Spotify is pushing on-demand audio music streaming to grow faster (+50pc) than video (+35pc), TechCrunch reported.

In the first half of this year, 33.65bn songs were streamed, compared to 36.64bn music-video streams.

At this rate, according to TechCrunch, pure audio streaming will overtake music-video streaming in the US by the end of this year.

Music streaming image via Shutterstock

Tina Costanza was a journalist and sub-editor at Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com