New and current music is experiencing a fall in popularity in the US, according to a new report.
Mid-year figures published by US market monitor Luminate revealed that on-demand track streams, downloads, plus all album sales on digital and physical formats over the past 18 months fell by 1.4 per cent in the first half of 2022 compared with the same period last year.
Up to 131.3million album-sale-equivalent units of music from the past 18 months were registered in the first six months of this year.
That was down by nearly two million units on the 133.1million units recorded in the first half of 2021.
Despite that, anything streamed, downloaded or purchased prior to 18 months grew by 14 per cent to 344million units in the first half of this year.
Meanwhile, the volume of on-demand audio streams of current music also fell by 2.6 per cent in the first half of this year while the volume for video streaming platforms fell by 10.4 per cent during the same period.
According to the report, there was a “measurable decline in ‘high impacting’ new releases overall, which are defined as [any] album that debuts on the Billboard 200” during the first half of 2022.
During the second quarter of 2021 there were 126 ‘high impacting’ releases. This fell to 102 in 2022.
In the UK meanwhile, a recent report showed vinyl sales in the UK look set to overtake CDs this year.
Vinyl albums brought in £135.6million in 2021 (up 23.2 per cent year-on-year) compared to £150.1million in CD sales (down 3.9 per cent year-on-year). On this current growth trajectory, vinyl will be ahead by the end of this year.
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