U.S. streaming doubled in 2015 (Nielsen)

Nielsen Music’s latest data shows that streaming doubled in the U.S. in 2015. Billboard has a first look at the company’s reports from the recently concluded year. The total songs streamed increased from 164.5 billion in 2014 to 317.2 billion last year. Under Nielsen’s equivalency equation of 1,500 streams making one album, that’s an increase of 211.5 million albums.

The 2015 performance revealed a sharper rate of growth compared with the previous year. The 2014 figure was an increase of 54% from 2013. So streaming is now gaining ground at a faster pace even than last year’s strong results.

The record industry posted growth of 15.2% in 2015 in album consumption units, largely on the back of the big streaming numbers. Last year saw 549.4 million album consumption units. Digital downloads fell 12.5% for tracks and 2.9% for albums. Unit numbers for 2015 were 964.8 million for digital tracks and 103.3 million for digital albums. Physical sales also declined 8.3% to 137.5 million.