Some blame the lack of blockbusters during the pandemic. Some blame the lack of emerging modern superstars. And some (hello Merck!) blame the fact that young people – as evidenced by the current global popularity of Kate Bush – simply enjoy “old” music as if it were “new” music.
But facts are facts: “Current” music in the United States isn’t just losing market share. It becomes statistically less popular.
This is according to the new mid-year report published by the US market monitor Luminate (formerly MRC Data / Nielsen Music).
It shows that the total consumption of recorded music albums in the United States in the first half of 2022 fell by 1.4% compared to the same period in 2021.
Obviously, the words in inverted commas there could do with a little disassembly, so here it goes:
In its first half report (download here), Luminate reveals that 131.3 million album sales equivalent (TAC) of current music were recorded in the US in the first six months of this year.
Compared to the 133.1 million TAC units registered in the first half of last year (2021), it was almost 2 million units less.
To reiterate: we’re not just talking about declining market share here.
We’re talking about “current” music actually becoming less popular in terms of streams and sales.
All of this must be understood in the context of a growing market.
According to Luminate, total album consumption of all music in the United States (that’s “current” + “catalog”) grew 9.3% to 475.4 million in H1 2022.
That can only mean one thing: while the popularity of current music declined in the first half of this year, the popularity of catalog music rose significantly, up 14.0% year-over-year to 344.1 million TAC units.
Catalog’s market share, in turn, continues to dwarf that of current music: Luminate’s report shows that catalog’s market share in the first half of 2022 was 72.4%, as current music’s market share fell a full 3% to just 27.6. %.
This isn’t actually the first time that current music’s popularity has declined in real terms in the US – it’s just the latest chapter in a post-Covid shutdown trend.
Luminate’s 2021 full year report (download here) revealed that current music “TAC” units were 269.5 million units in the 12 calendar months of last year, down 3.7% from the 279.9 million units recorded in FY2020 (see below). ).
Again, we’re not just talking about a reduction in current music market share here, but a reduction in actual streams/sales.
Don’t think that the popularity of “current” music is simply being suppressed by the decline of CD or other non-streaming formats.
One of the more surprising statistics in Luminate’s latest report (see below) shows that in the US, in the first half of 2022, the volume of on-demand audio streams for “current” music fell by 2.6% compared to last year.
And the decline in current music’s popularity on video streaming platforms (-10.4% year-on-year) was even more severe.
Meanwhile, Luminate says, catalog music streaming volume grew 19.0% year over year in the first half of 2022.
So what’s driving these numbers?
In its 1H 2022 report, Luminate attempts to provide some answers, noting, “This trend is generally evident in the measurable decline in ‘high-impact’ new releases, defined as [any] album that debuts on the Billboard 200.”
Luminate says there were 126 high-impact publications in the second quarter of 2021. By the end of the second quarter of 2022, there were only 102.
So we know that new blockbusters hitting the top echelon of the US charts are becoming less and less common.
But what about the possibility of power cuts for blockbuster streaming tracks?
According to Luminate/MRC Data/Nielsen Music’s H1 reports, MBW has scored top 10 mid-year hits on audio streaming in the US for the past four years.
(i.e. we’ve looked at reports showing the most popular on-demand tracks in the US for the first six months of each year and aggregated them.)
You can see how that comparison looks below.
The easy version: The top 10 US audio streaming tracks for H1 2022 were cumulatively over 1 billion fewer plays than in H1 2019 (2.74 billion vs. 3.81 billion).
[Please note that the below is not official Luminate data; it is based on MBW calculations of data published in the official mid-year reports of Luminate / MRC Data / Nielsen Music.]
However, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions that golden oldies “catalog music” is gobbling up today’s teenage listeners (yes, even if Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill is still the #1 global song on Spotify right now, nearly two months after it premiered on that Stranger Things series .)
According to Luminate’s H1 2022 report, over a third of all catalog streams in the US in the first half of this year were actually performances of music released between 2017 and 2019 (see below).
(Remember that catalog just means music that was released 18 months or more before someone played/bought it.)
Music released in 2019 alone accounted for 14% of all catalog streams in the first half of 2022; In 2018, the share of originally released music was 11%.
Music originally released in either of those years was more popular on US streaming services in the first half of 2022 than all music released in the 1990s combined.
The same goes for all music released in the 1980s and all music released in the 1970s.
However, the big questions here in the music business are less the “rise of the catalog” than the statistical decline in the popularity of new music.
The volume of music streams in the world’s largest music market is growing by double digits year after year.
But for whatever reason, “new” music—whether it’s a temporary trend or a more permanent pattern—is officially on the wane.Music Business Worldwide
