Music Streaming Hits One-Trillion Milestone in 2019

According to Nielsen Music and MRC Data's 2019 Year-End Music Report, Americans streamed a record of nearly 1.15 trillion (!) songs during the past 12 months. That equates to roughly 3,500 songs for each of the country's 327 million inhabitants and marks a 29 percent increase of the 2018 total. At 746 billion, the number of on-demand audio streams grew by 24 percent in 2019, while on-demand video streams (think YouTube) jumped 41 percent to 401 billion.

As the following chart illustrates, the number of songs streamed over the internet has increased more than tenfold between 2013 and 2019. Streaming, both ad-supported and subscription-based, now accounts for 80 percent of U.S. music revenues and has long replaced CDs and downloads as the number one way of consuming music.

Interestingly, video platforms used to account for the majority of on-demand music streams until 2015, the year Apple Music was launched. As more and more people are paying for music streaming subscription, that balance started shifting towards pure audio streams. Last year, audio streams accounted for roughly two thirds of all on-demand music streams.