Before more data, here are a few important definitions. BuzzAngle distinguishes “Sales” from “Projects” — the latter embracing consumption across sales and streaming channels. The audio streams of total album project units are calculated as album sales plus song sales divided by 10, plus on-demand audio streams divided by 1,500. The total streams version adds in on-demand video streams divided by 1,500. The total song project units are song sales plus on-demand audio streams divided by 150.
Total album consumption rose 12.8% to 603.2 million. On-demand streams accounted for 66.1% of that total, a share that grew 12.2% over the previous year. Within the streaming portion, audio outpaced video, growing 4% to a 66% share. BuzzAngle also found that 80% of total audio streams were from subscription listeners.
Total song consumption spiked 25.9% to 4.6 billion. Album sales dipped 14.6%, including a 7% decline for physical formats and a 22.6% drop for digital album sales. To contrast the performance of streaming with downloads, 2017 saw a daily average of 1.67 billion streams, which is more than double the number of song downloads for the whole year (563.7 million).