BuzzAngle Music has published its mid-year report, reflecting six months of growth for the U.S. music industry. Total consumption increased 9.9% over the same period in 2016. Audio streams grew 58.5% on-year to 179.8 billion. Subscription streams accounted for 78.6% of the audio stream total, compared with 73.6% of the total streams in the same period of 2016. Subscription streams posted a 69.3% increase, reaching a total of nearly 141.3 billion.
Overall album sales followed the global trends downward, falling 13.9% to about 74.1 million. Digital sales dropped 24.3% to 34.5 million and physical album sales fell 2.1% to 39.5 million. As with previous reports, vinyl was the only growth segment. Vinyl sales rose 20.4%, but remain a sliver of the grand total at 3.6 million.
BuzzAngle also offered a look at other trends in music consumption over the first six months of the year. Hip-hop and rap accounted for nearly a quarter (24.4%) of the period’s total audio streams. The top album by streams was More Life by Drake, however the winner by both total consumption and album sales was Ed Sheeran’s Divide.