On-demand music streaming volume increased modestly in the U.S. during 2024, but jumped north of 17% in all other nations, according to a new report. Photo Credit: Devon Divine
U.S. on-demand audio streams increased by 6.4% during 2024, when global music streaming volume spiked 14% to 4.8 trillion, according to newly released data.
These and other noteworthy findings come from Luminate’s 2024 year-end report, which covers all manner of domestic and international consumption stats across its 90 pages.
Keeping the focus on streaming, however, the above-highlighted U.S. on-demand audio streams came in specifically at 1.4 trillion last year, the breakdown shows. Bearing in mind the global market’s 4.8 trillion on-demand streams, the remaining 3.4 trillion non-U.S. streams represent a 17.3% YoY boost.
By core genre, R&B and hip-hop tracks were far and away the most popular on-demand streaming uploads in the U.S. during 2024, the report indicates, followed by rock, pop, and country, respectively.
Nevertheless, hip-hop’s stateside on-demand streaming share continued to slip last year, when Latin and then country/folk rather definitively led the pack growth-wise, the document notes.
Transitioning to the international stage, Luminate’s 2024 report, despite spanning 11 more pages than its 2023 counterpart, doesn’t seem to include a list of the top-10 countries by streaming volume.
According to the appropriate resource, though, India (1.04 trillion on-demand video and audio streams) was threatening to overtake the U.S. (1.45 trillion) in 2023. And given the aforementioned 17.3% YoY growth for global on-demand streams, the overarching trend presumably continued in 2024.
Moving on to 2024’s more minute streaming trends, an average of 99,000 new ISRCs (not necessarily proper songs) arrived on DSPs daily – down from 2023’s daily average of 103,500, the resource shows.
Running with the point – and bearing in mind Spotify’s highly controversial practice of paying recording royalties only on tracks with over 1,000 annual streams – just 13% of DSPs’ recordings surpassed 1,000 streams apiece in 2024, the report states.
Closing with a look at the physical side, U.S. album sales (across vinyl, CDs, and cassettes alike) fell 1% in 2024 to 55.6 million units, according to the analysis.
As many will recall, 2024 brought with it a much-debated sales-calculation pivot at Luminate for indie retailers – and adjacent questions about the accuracy of comparisons with historical numbers.
Consequently, the year-end report acknowledges “the new modeled methodology” and the absence of “comparable historical data to provide an accurate year-over-year trend.”
Stated differently, the updated physical sales numbers for indie retail are materially lower than under the prior model, historical comparisons previously disclosed. In any event, as identified by “the new modeled methodology,” 2024 saw indie stores move 17.3 million vinyl units, 5.4 million CDs, and about 165,000 cassettes in the U.S.
“U.S. Vinyl sales are +4.3% in 2024 compared to 2023 when excluding the independent retail strata,” the report clarifies for good measure.