Like MBW yesterday’s reportTotal on-demand audio streams in the US last year grew strongly – up 12.1% to 1.1 trillion.
According to the figures revealed in Luminate’s year-end reportThis streaming volume also accelerates every year in evolution from 2021 (total number of streams has increased by 121.8 billion won YoY in 2022, bigger than 111.0 billion VND we saw in 2021 – see below).
A deeper dive into Luminate’s numbers, however, confirms that long-term trends in the modern music business will become even more apparent in 2022: The top 10 biggest hits in the US each year are becoming less popular.
MBW’s analysis of the latest Luminate figures shows that the top 10 audio streaming hits in the US in 2022 have steadily increased 4.723 billion won broadcast on on-demand services (Spotify, YouTube Music, apple music, amazon music etc) in 2022.
It’s down on 5.274 billion won streaming Top 10 equivalents shared in 2021, 5,967 Billion Top 10 shared equivalents in 2020, 6,218 billion won Top 10 equivalents shared in 2019… and even 4.91 billion won Top 10 shared five years ago in 2017.
The fact that the Top 10 Biggest Audio Streams in the US last year generated fewer cumulative streams than in the comparable year – besides the fact that total audio streaming has increased in the market – can only mean one: The combined market share of the ten biggest US hits fell again.
As calculated by MBW, aggregating the top 10 US audio streaming, Responsible for accumulating for less 0.5% of all on-demand audio plays in the US every year.
In other words – as we have in the title of this story – less than one in every 200 plays on audio streaming services in the US last year as one of the top 10 tracks of 2022.
In fact, about almost one in every 250 plays in the US last year was in the Top 10.
Back in 2017, just five years ago, over One in every 100 audio streams (1.23%) in the Top 10 songs.
According to Luminate, the biggest audio streaming in the US in 2022 is by Harry Styles’ As it used to be (released via Columbia Profile), with 609.7 million won drama of the year.
That performance is slightly below the annual stream count of the biggest audio streaming hit of 2021 (Dua Lipa, fly up – 627m ).
No As it used to be neither fly up could match the calendar year popularity of the biggest US audio streaming hit of 2020 (Roddy Ricch’s Box – 920.4 million plays) or the biggest hit of 2018 (Drake, God’s Plan – 917.9m).
Only one hit passed 1 billion won annual on-demand audio playing mark in the US in recent years, according to Luminate data: Lil Nas X’s Old Street in 2019 (see below).
According to Luminate’s year-end report, the Top 10 most popular tracks on on-demand audio streaming services in the US in 2022 are:
- Harry Styles, As It Was
- Glass Animals, Heat Waves
- Success in the future. Drake & Tems, Waiting For You
- Bad Bunny & Chencho Corleone, I’m Porto Bonito
- Black Kodak, Super Gremlin
- Bad Bunny, Tito Me Pregunto
- Jack Harlow, 1st place
- Actor Encanto, We’re Not Talking About Bruno
- Steve Lacy, Bad Habit
- Zach Bryan, Something in the Orange
As mentioned, the top 10 hits of 2022 on audio streaming formats are responsible for 0.425% of all audio streams in the United States last year, according to our analysis of Luminate’s metrics.
That market share (0.425%) accounted for about half of the market share that the Top 10 equivalent songs held in 2019 (0.83%) and about a third of the market share size that the Top 10 claimed in 2017 (1.23%).
You may not need MBW to tell you what is driving this downward trend for the ‘supersuccessors’ in the US, but we’ll remind you anyway. It is largely a combination of the following three factors:
- The increase in listening by category compared to listening to ‘frontline’ music;
- Increase in listenership by ‘non-superstar’ artists plus artists from outside the US – likely to accelerate as the power of the ‘gatekeeper’ mainstream media is dwindling in promoting a narrow field of stars; and
- The amount of music released and listened to increases.
in MBW ‘5 Numbers Will Determine 2023’ last week’s article, we identify this trend as the growing “atomicization” of listening — and thus the distribution of streaming royalties — in the United States.
Within the scope of that article, we mentioned a confirmed statistics the words Warner Music Corporation: In the company’s 2012 financial year, the top 5 superstars created 15% its recorded music sales; By fiscal 2022, WMG said, that percentage has dropped to 5%.
Global Music Business
