Streaming music in U.S. up 93 pct in 2015; Adele tops album sales

By Piya Sinha-Roy
LOS ANGELES, Jan 6 (Reuters) - U.S. music consumers almost
doubled their use of streaming services in 2015, with Apple
Inc's AAPL.O new Apple music platform helping boost volume a
record 93 percent, Nielsen Music said on Wednesday.
Music consumers used on-demand streaming platforms to listen
to 317 billion songs, exceeding projections. Physical album
sales declined again, with British singer Adele's "25" providing
a bright spot in an otherwise dreary market.
"The amount of exposure Apple gave to streaming can't be
understated," said David Bakula, senior vice president of
industry insights at Nielsen Entertainment.
About 241 million albums were purchased last year, a 6
percent drop from 2014; 103 million albums were bought in
digital formats and nearly 12 percent of all albums were bought
on vinyl.
Rock music accounted for a third of the albums sold over
2015, while pop music dominated singles.
But while streaming dominated the music industry with
large-scale platforms including Google Play GOOGL.O , Amazon
Prime Music AMZN.O and Spotify, two of the year's
biggest-selling albums, Adele's "25" and Taylor Swift's "1989,"
were strategically kept off streaming services.
Adele's "25" smashed opening week sales records in November
and has clocked a total of 7.4 million albums sold by year end.
Taylor Swift had the second biggest-selling album of the year
with her "1989" record selling just under 2 million copies.
"What works for Adele and Taylor Swift doesn't necessarily
work for everyone else," Bakula said, suggesting the two were
exceptions to the rule and that most artists still turned to
streaming for a part of their sales.
The third biggest-selling album of the year, Justin Bieber's
"Purpose," smashed streaming records in November, with 205
million global streams in its debut week.
Bakula added there was "no question" that streaming had
helped curb the online piracy of music that severely hurt the
industry in the early 2000s with platforms such as Napster.
R&B and hip hop music accounted for 21 percent of the 317
billion streams consumed on on-demand platforms, and artists
such as Drake, Future, The Weeknd and Kendrick Lamar delivered
some of the year's top-selling and best-received records.
A steady increase in vinyl sales seemingly defies the masses
of consumers flocking to streaming platforms.
"Vinyl is driven by independent record stores and consumers
who are into sound quality and tangible, physical products,"
Bakula said. "Everything about the technology revolution is
counterintuitive to vinyl sales, and yet, it still increases."