Nielsen Music reports worst week for downloads, but best for streams

Nielsen Music’s data revealed that the week ending Aug. 27 was the lowest for digital song sales in seven years. Only 15.66 million songs were sold on digital platforms for the week. The top track for the period, “Locked Away” by R. City, sold only 92,000 downloads.

On the other hand, that same week had the highest level of on-demand audio and video streams on record. The week posted 6.6 billion streams, with the top track (“Watch Me” by Silento) commanding 22.3 million of them. Nielsen’s data also showed that in the year-to-date, on-demand streams have increased 100% over the same time frame last year: from 95.8 billion in 2014 to 191.4 billion in 2015.