Over 66% of all music listening in the US is now of catalog records, rather than new releases

There were 555.3 billion streams of music on audio and video platforms in the United States in the first six months of 2021 – up by 54.3 billion year-on-year.

But the bigger story for the Stateside music industry is less about how much people listened, and more about what they listened to.

According to MRC Data‘s new mid-year report, the six months to end of June 2021 saw catalog music’s share of total album consumption in the US rise to 66.4% (whereby ‘catalog’ reflects anything released over 18 months before a consumer made a purchase and/or pressed play).

That 66.4% figure was up from 63.9% in the first six months of 2020, and, according to prior MRC Data / Nielsen Music reports, up from 60.8% in the first six months of 2018.
A quick explainer: MRC’s ‘total album consumption’ metric bundles together physical and digital album sales with single-track downloads and streams, with these single-track downloads and streams converted into ‘album equivalent’ units. To achieve this, MRC converts every 1,250 premium streams or 3,750 ad-supported streams of tracks on an album into a single ‘sale’ for that LP. It does the same for every 10 downloads of tracks from a single album. This formula is designed to be ‘revenue reflective’ – for example, with 1,250 premium streams roughly generating the same amount of money as a single album. ‘Total album consumption’ does not take into account digital or terrestrial radio plays.

Conversely, the percentage of total album consumption claimed by ‘current’ music – that’s music released within the prior 18 months of a consumer making a purchase and/or pressing play – keeps on falling.

In the first half of 2021, according to MRC Data’s report, ‘current’ music claimed just 33.6% of total consumption, down from 36.1% in H1 2020.
In real terms, here’s what that means: Of the 434.7 million ‘equivalent’ album sales in the US in H1 this year, approximately 288.6 million were of catalog records.

That’s nearly double the amount of album-equivalent units racked up by ‘current’ music in the period (146.1 million).

Looking at the growth patterns of ‘catalog’ and ‘current’ music sharpens the story of catalog’s flourishing dominance.

According to MBW a***ysis of MRC’s report, catalog music saw its album-equivalent consumption grow by 44.1 million units YoY in H1 2021 vs. H1 2020.
‘Current’ music, meanwhile, saw YoY growth of just 7.7 million units.

A fun exercise for you: What if this pattern (+44.1m per year for ‘catalog’, +7.7m for ‘current’) continues over the next nine years?

Well, in the first half of 2030, that would mean ‘catalog’ music had 685.5 million equivalent units, but that ‘current’ music had just 215.4 million.

In other words, in this extrapolated scenario, ‘catalog’ music would have a 76% market share. ‘Current’ music would weigh in with a lowly 24% – less than a quarter of the market.

musicbusinessworldwide.com/over-66-of-all-music-listening-in-the-us-is-now-of-catalog-records-rather-than-new-releases

yep cause new music is dead rn

inb4 the mfs taking about you ain’t looking hard enough

Most people are adults, adults like music from when they were younger, makes sense

My Dad is not gonna buy a Gunna record

if its over a week old I ain't tryna hear it

makes sense

all i usually listen to is older s***

im sure the same thing ccould be proven when thug and future dropped in 2015. useless article

I mean most music is older music, people like listening to what they like and have liked

When things are back to normal fr numbers go rise people Sleeping on hot new music just cause they’re dusty and can’t get with the times.

But how come it doesn’t reflect in streaming charts?

That makes sense there’s decades of modern music to choose from.

there’s more old music than new music available

Or the new music sucks

isnt that normal?

I listen to all kinds of music new and old this is such a dumb and arbitrary thing to measure

Realistically it’s only a small portion. There’s tons of good new music. We’re just those old heads we hated and are in denial about it.

Fair enough, I mean there’s only very few new artists I check on

Not surprising, mainstream music now absolutely stinks, it used to be bad but now it's just sad.

I’m pretty sure it’s always been like this but now with streaming they are able to actually have data on it

Y’all know most are nostalgic to they early years

Not to mention this stat is total streams and not genre specific. Who knows, this could very well not be the case for hip hop

This number will only keep increasing when you see the state of the music industry.

Nobody buys a gunna record

They stream it

Which is why it doesn’t stick with people.

That's not why it's not sticking

there’s good underground s*** but time was a lot easier when you had an artist like usher in the mainstream not bryson tiller