Yes because the stats are tracking every single time someone clicks play on a song now, whereas that kind of tracking did not exist before the streaming era

You’re ignoring the fact that 1 person buying an album doesn’t necessarily mean that A) they’re the only ones playing it, and B) they aren’t playing it more than once

It’s counted as less on paper because a stream is the most passive thing you can do and also there’s no direct transfer of money for product; why should it be weighed the same as a sale?

None of that disputes my point.

An album’s consumption can be lower and it is still consumed by a broader population.

There is no way for either of us to prove or disprove that because listening habits were not tracked in the same way before streaming.

You could buy an album and listen to it 100 times in a week and all the report would show is your one sale.

YES I AGREE, ON PAPER CONSUMPTION IS HIGHER NOW. I AGREE.

But you are removing all context as to why that is the case. It is solely because streaming equates any listen to a sales unit, so albums and songs are essentially moving units forever because people are never not listening to music

1. 99.99% of people do not listen to an album 100 times in a week. 99.99% of people don’t even listen to an average album they buy 100 times in their lifetime.

2. Yet 1 sale still already counts more than that.

I agree. 1500 listens for one sale is way too high. One sale should not be weighed that much.

You realize that it would add up, right? It’s like you think each million of streams a new album gets is a million individual people and… it’s just not.

The same would apply to albums of yesteryear

How much effort does typing in a title and clicking play take

Also, y’all do realize that if they lowered the number of streams for a sale then we would be the ones paying for it, right?

Again I agree with all this, you know I know the game. I think the point in contention is in how we took mangotflu’s post - I take “albums are bigger than ever” to mean “the albums now are bigger than the albums then” rather than a point about overall consumption

I think it would be asinine to say the albums now are bigger album by album

How much effort does pressing buy on your artists favorite website take? How much effort does walking by the music section in target while shopping for groceries and grabbing an album off the shelf take. Not every single physical album sale is bc the person ran to buy the album in store. Most are from artists websites through an ig link lol. 1500 listens is A LOT for one sale.

I’d rather drive to 10 stores and buy an album 10 times before I have to sit and listen to a song for 1500 times lol.

You are the only one who keeps saying that. I already said things with billions of streams does not mean a billion listeners obviously.

However the amount of unique listeners SURELY would have to be in the millions.

How many people do you think listen to a song with 1 billion streams?

You got to a point I’ve been interested in for some time: WE NEED TO SEE UNIQUE LISTENERS FOR STREAMING

The average person like a regular who doesn’t gaf about music is gonna stream a song like 10 times total even if they like it.

He keeps trying to make scenarios where ppl are just casually listening to something 100 times a week

I think it’s not far fetched to assume anything with a billion+ streams had a population reach of 10-50 million.

Well, let’s break it down for you. The average price of a new vinyl from a mainstream artist is about $30. Add tax and shipping, you’re probably looking at a total price of around $40-$45.

The most recent National Average Wage Index is about $66K. Divide that by 26 biweekly paychecks and divide that by 80 to get an hourly wage, and you get about $31 an hour.

So, in an order to afford a new vinyl by a major mainstream artist in 2025, the average person would have to do be willing to give up about 1 hour and 20 minutes of their time.

Now explain to me how this somehow should equate to clicking on an app, typing in a title, and pressing play on a song in a matter of seconds

Absolutely I’d guess a song with a billion streams reaches 10-50 million unique listeners

That would be about $300, plus gas to get to and from those stores.

Do you have 700 minutes of your time to exchange for the about $300-$350 it would cost to do this?

You’re right, but you are also ASSUMING that back then people that bought an album were the only ones listening to it. People literally grew up in households where their families would play records and CDs for their siblings and entire family. So that one purchase was reaching anywhere between 3 and 6+ people. Now imagine that spread across an entire nation

Exactly, I think the numbers would look a lot more down to earth if that was communicated. It would also explain why culture is so fragmented now because I promise you 100M+ people did not listen to that Morgan Wallen album this year

If 1 person buys an album and listens to it with 5 people it counts as 1 sale.

If 100 people stream an album once it counts as less than 1 sale.

So again, streaming generally requires reaching a much bigger raw population to ever reach a comparable unit

Yes but it doesn’t mean it’s automatically reaching more people, the two metrics are measuring two different things

If you buy an album on vinyl, throw a party and invite 100 people over to hear it, that counts as one sale.

If you do the same and invite 3,500 people over, it’s still one sale.

Obviously streaming is gonna weigh less than sales because they. are. not. sales.

You’re framing it like 100 people are buying a digital copy of the album and it’s not counting as a sale. Like I keep saying, you’re misinterpreting the data.

A stream is not a sale and a sale is not a stream

They honestly should’ve always kept them separate and never even came up with the concept of streaming equivalent units

Like “streams” should’ve been the new measure of engagement and sales should’ve just remained a separate thing

Buying an album and playing it with hundreds of people: a 0.00001% chance of happening.

Hundreds of people listening to a new album once when it drops and never returning: FREQUENTLY occurs

You see why your point is ridiculous? It’s very clear in general there will generally always be much more people that contributed to 1 streaming unit than 1 sale.

Again I ask: why should ONE person listening to an album ONE time count as a sale? It takes literally zero effort or monetary amount whatsoever to play an album on streaming.

It doesn’t count as a sale BECAUSE it is not a sale

And again. If y’all want the stream equivalent to a sale number to be lower, cool, but WE WOULD BE THE ONES PAYING FOR IT. That’s what y’all routinely fail to understand

…I never said one listen should count as one sale.

I don’t have an issue with the way a streaming unit counts. It’s reflective of revenue mostly in comparison to a sale. At the end of the day labels are measuring success based on revenue.

I just clarified that you can absolutely argue music is more popular than ever in terms of population reach but that’s something which a unit doesn’t necessarily reflect.