Even with artists like Adele withholding their new albums from streaming services, music streaming continued to grow at a ridiculous pace last year. According to Nielsen’s year-in-review report, people streamed more than 317 million songs in 2015, which is a 92.3% increase from 2014. Of those 317 million streams, 54.3% was streamed through video services like YouTube, while the other 45.7% was streamed through audio services like Spotify. Naturally, this growth came at the cost of actual sales, which declined by about 11%, except for vinyl sales, which actually grew by 30%.
Despite being released just six weeks before the end of 2015, Adele’s 25 was the story of the year in the music industry. Album sales totaled 3.377 million in week one and the release set an all-time record for highest album share of total industry albums, as it accounted for more than 41% of the total album sales that week. And those were just two of the milestones. 25 has also performed well digitally, as 1.644 million digital albums were sold in week one. Aside from the excitement at year-end, on-demand audio and video streaming continued to gain in popularity in 2015, posting growth rates of 83% and 102%, respectively. In fact, Justin Bieber’s album Purpose set an all-time record for total audio on-demand streams when it was streamed more than 100 million times the week of its release. In the physical realm, vinyl stayed strong, as sales of LPs hit a new record in 2015—nearly 12 million units. This marks the 10th straight year of vinyl sales growth. The big winners in this realm were independent record stores, which drove 45% of all vinyl sales. The biggest genre for vinyl? Rock, with 68% of LP sales.
