Nielsen Music Mid-Year Report: on-demand audio streams in the US grew 45.4% year-over-year to 268.2B in the first half of 2018
The music industry is in the midst of a growth spurt that has led to 15-year record revenues for the major label groups and continues to break new consumption records for the first half of 2018.
Context & Ripple Effects
This mid-year reading extends a run Nielsen has been publishing annually: last July's H1 2017 report counted 184.3B on-demand audio streams, and by January Nielsen had declared streaming the majority format with 54% of all US music consumption. The H1 2018 figure of 268.2B confirms the format shift is compounding, not plateauing.
First-order effects
- Major label groups are capturing the volume directly as revenue, posting their best first-half results in 15 years per Nielsen's own framing of the report.
Second-order effects
- The deceleration already visible in the series — 62.4% growth in H1 2017 slowing to 45.4% here, and later to 31.6% in the H1 2019 report — pushes labels and services toward competing on catalog depth and pricing tiers rather than raw subscriber acquisition.
Third-order effects
- With streaming having overtaken every other format as early as 2016 per Nielsen's full-year 2016 tally, the remaining structural question is how long percentage growth can hold as the base doubles — pointing the industry toward monetization per stream rather than adoption curves as the metric that matters.
The trend: US recorded music has completed its shift to streaming as the dominant consumption format, and the industry's economics now ride a large-but-decelerating stream-volume curve.