Sound of melody: Over 1 trillion songs were played in 2019; music streaming services made CDs, vinyl records obsolete

Music streaming touched the 1-trillion mark in 2019, according to Nielsen Music and MRC Data’s 2019 Year-End Music Report. The report, which drew on analytics from streaming platforms in the United States, found that more than a trillion songs were played, which equates to around 3,500 songs per person. This represents a 29 per cent increase in the number of songs played in 2018.

Audio streaming has also grown by 24 per cent in 2019. Google-owned YouTube dominated on-demand video streaming of music. Video streams of songs rose 41 per cent year-on-year to 401 billion in 2019.

The rise of cheaper data plans has caused the number of songs streamed over the internet to increase exponentially in the past decade. Music streaming rose tenfold between 2014 and 2019. This is spread across a number of apps like Apple Music, Spotify, and regional streaming platforms, some of which are supported by ads, while others are subscription based. Streaming services now account for 80 per cent of music revenue in the U.S., replacing CDs, vinyl records, and simple mp3 downloads as the most preferred means of consuming music.

Video platforms accounted for the lion’s share of on-demand music streams till 2015, the year Apple decided to dip its toes in the music streaming business with Apple Music. As it started garnering subscribers, similar entities started to sign up subscribers who were willing to pay for high-quality audio playback that consumed less data than what a free video stream with annoying ads would.

With a marked shift in listening preferences, people started migrating to pure audio streams. In 2019, audio streams accounted two thirds of all music streams. In 2013, video and audio streams shared the spoils among the 106 billion songs played. Today, audio accounts for 65 per cent of all streams.