Rolling Stone - USA (2020-02)

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How We Listened in 2019

Streaming soared, vinyl kept growing, and Post Malone proved unstoppable.

Our year-end stats take you inside the year’s biggest trends By EMILY BLAKE

Republic Shows Up

It was a massive year for Republic

Records, which shattered the com-

petition in the upper ranks of ROLLING

STONE’s year-end charts. Half of the top

10 albums and three of the top 10 songs

of the year were from Republic artists.

Taylor Swift’s Lover was the Number One

album by sales, while Post Malone’s Hol-

lywood’s Bleeding and Ariana Grande’s

Thank U, Next were streaming giants.

Post Malone Double Dips

2019 was the year Post Malone trans-

formed into the most indestructible

force in popular music. He was the

most-streamed artist of 2019, knocking

Drake off a throne he sat on for four

years. As if the enormity of Holly wood’s

Bleeding wasn’t enough, 2018’s Beer-

bongs & Bentleys ranked fifth in streams

a year after its release. The album is a

streaming smash, with 84 percent of its

units coming from streams.

2.22B

1.67B

1.62B

3

2

1

4

5

Ariana Grande

Thank U, Next

Republic

Billie Eilish

When We All

Fall Asleep...

Interscope

Post Malone

Hollywood’s

Bleeding

Republic

Khalid

Free Spirit

RCA

Post Malone

Beerbongs &

Bentleys

Republic

2.36B

3.17B

This list measures on-demand audio streams in the U.S. from January 1st through December 31st, 2019, as

recorded by Alpha Data. For the full list of the top albums of 2019, visit RollingStone.com/charts/albums/year-end.

Top Streamed Albums

Streaming: Good

News, Mostly

STREAMING’S TIPPING POINT came in 2016,
when streams swelled to 432 billion and became
the main source of music consumption in the U.S. Every
year since, while sales have plummeted, overall album
consumption has increased.
Our year-end numbers show that this upward trend
continued in 2019, with U.S. consumption up 13.5 percent,
to 795.9 million album units. (The main metric for ROLLING
STONE’s albums charts, album units, combines digital
and physical album sales, digital song sales, and audio
streams, using a custom weighting system.) Streaming’s
share also continued to swell, accounting for 85 percent
of all units. There were 705 billion total on-demand

rise in overall consumption. Year-on-year, on-demand

audio- stream growth decreased nearly 25 percent.

There’s been speculation that on-demand video services

like Netflix have already hit market saturation; music

streaming could be on its way there too.

audio streams in 2019, and when you include video

streams, it was the first year on-demand streams sur-

passed 1 trillion.

While 1 trillion is massive, it’s not all good news.

Streaming growth is starting to slow, and, with it, the

CHARTS

THE BIGGEST ARTISTS,

ALBUMS, AND SONGS

OF TODAY

SONG

SALES

6%

AUDIO

STREAMS

84%

ALBUM

SALES

10%

2.9M

STREAMS

0

100M

200M

300M

400M

500M

600M

700M

800M

2016

534.8M

54%

32%

14%

603.2M

66%

25%

9%

Total Annual Consumption in the U.S. by Album Units

7%

701.0M

76%

17%

4%

795.9M

85%

Streams Song Sales Album Sales 11%

2017 2018 2019

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