Roddy Ricch’s “The Box” (via Atlantic) was the most popular streaming song in 2020, with 1.3 billion streams on demand, surpassing Future’s “Life Is Good” with Drake (via Epic), which had 1 billion on-demand streams. Lil Baby My turn (via Quality Control) was the No. 1 album of the year, generating 2.6 million consumer units, with Taylor Swift’s folklore (via Republic) coming in second with 2.2 million album consumption units – of which 1.3 million were sales (including 796,000 downloads), making it the best-selling album of the year. In fact, Swift placed four albums in the top 200 of the year, as she Lover album ranked 33rd with 878,000 album consumption units; ever was No. 70 with 569,000 units and 1989 was No. 116 with 428,000 units.
For the 21st consecutive year, Universal Music Group led all record companies in market share with 38.5% in 2020, 40 basis points above 38.1% in 2019. Along the way, recording acts on UMG’s record companies led the Billboard 200 for 36 weeks – or 69.2% – in the year.
Streaming now comprises 84.3% of total album consumption units, up 3% from 81.8% in 2019. Meanwhile, all sales decreased from 18.2% in 2019 to 15.8% in 2020. Physical sales represented 8.5% of total music consumption.
Album consumption units comprise album sales counts, albums of equivalent tracks where 10 sales tracks are equivalent to one album, and equivalent streaming albums in which 1,250 paid streams or 3,750 ad-supported streams are equivalent to an equivalent album.
Catalog exceeding the current:
The catalog’s audio consumer album units – music available for 18 months or more – continued their growing market share in 2020, now covering 63.8% of the U.S. market. Overall, it grew 12.8% to 483.2 million units, from 428.3 million units in 2019. Current audio consumption units – music available for less than 18 months and older albums that are still halfway through higher than the Billboard 200 and / or being reproduced on successful radio stations – now reach 36.2% of the market, growing in general 9.3% to 265.61 million units from 249.8 million units.
Last year, the catalog had 63.5% of the market share and the current 36.5%. In 2015, the catalog’s consumption units conquered 57.2% of the market and 42.8% today.
By genre, hip-hop rules while rock and pop languish:
Of the three largest genres, R & B / Hip-Hop once again produced the greatest growth, with a rise of 13.8% to 211.04 million in audio album consumption units in 2020, from 185.5 million units in 2019. Its market share grew to 28.2% from 27.7% in 2019.
Rock was the second most popular genre, growing 4.3% to 150.95 units of audio album consumption from 144.7 million units. And pop came in third, with a 6.1% increase to 97.6 million units of audio album consumption from 91.3 million in 2019. But as no genre followed the overall growth in audio consumption from 11 , 6% of the industry, their share of the US market has fallen – rock ended 2020 with a 20.2% share in audio consumption units (from 21.6% in 2019), while pop share has dropped to 13.04% in 2020 (from 13.73% in 2019).
Market share measurements for 2020 come with a caveat: due to a recalibration down the road Advertising panel video streams account for graphics, the measurement of streaming video is significantly lower than last year. Consequently, Advertising panel did not include general consumption units for the album in this review story, as there is no apple-to-apple comparison available when looking at 2020 versus 2019. However, a previous story published on year-end figures examines genres across consumption units of the album, including equivalent streaming audio and video albums. See these gender figures for market share here.
The pandemic shakes CDs, but vinyl remains stable:
The market share of physical music sales continues to decline, its decline slowed in 2020, although thousands of retail stores were closed at the beginning of the pandemic; and then, when reopened, many had to limit the number of customers inside. Amazon also slowed down and delayed delivery of product lines like CDs and vinyl so that it could focus its vast service resources on what it called essential items during the beginning of the pandemic outbreak. Still, in 2020, physical albums fell just 7.4% to 68 million copies from 73.45 million in 2019 (compared to a 15.5% drop between 2019 and 2018). During the second half of 2020, physical music sales actually grew 4.4% to 41.1 million copies compared to the same period last year.
Vinyl sales continue to defy expectations, growing 46.2% in 2020 to 27.54 million copies from 18.84 million the previous year. Harry Styles’ Thin line was the best-selling vinyl title in 2020, moving almost 232,000 copies. For the second year in a row, Billie Eilish’s When we fall asleep, where do we go? was the second best-selling vinyl album, moving almost 196,000 copies in 2020 (up from the 176,000 sold in 2019).
The CD format, in turn, was probably the most affected by the economic crisis, digitizing just 40.1 million copies in 2020 – a 26% drop from the 54.2 million copies sold in 2019. Before the pandemic hit , the CD format had seen a dramatically slower decline: on March 12, 2020, the format dropped just 8.2% compared to the previous year.
Downloads of digital albums – which received a boost during the second quarter, when physical stores were closed – totaled 32.4 million copies. This represents a slow drop from the 39.3 million copies downloaded in 2019, a drop of just 12.5%. Sales of digital tracks fell more dramatically, dropping 22.3% to 233.74 million downloads, out of a total of 301.1 million downloads in 2019. BTS ‘Dynamite was the most popular digital song with 1, 26 million copies downloaded in 2020. This is more than double the number 2 digital song, “Lights” by The Weeknd, with 580,000 downloads.