The concert reports are delayed, again, but I’m largely distracted from that because my favourite report of the year is out….the Nielsen Year End Music Report. Woo! So, what happened in 2014? Sales were down, streams are up, and hipsters continue to love their vinyl.
Nielsen themselves lead with that. Streams are up a massive 54% for a total of 164 Billion. So, while digital album sales are down 9.4% to 106.5 million and digital track sales are down by 12.5% to 1.1025 billion, overall digital formats showed growth in 2014 (up 3.7%). Vinyl sales are up 51.8% such that vinyl LPs now account for 6% of all albums sold. Album sales including TEAs and SEAs are down overall 2% to 476.5M.
On demand music streams show robust growth across the boards. Audio is up 60.5% and video up 49.3%. Album sales are down 11.2% with CD’s taking the biggest hit (down 14.9%), digital still down (9.4%) and vinyl up (51.8%). Traditional merchant sales are down across the board with chains suffering the most (-20.6%), mass merchants not far behind (-19.3%) and independents almost staying steady (-0.5% – that’s because independent stores are where you go to buy your vinyl). Non-traditional vendors (think internet, bookstores and direct-to-consumer) are up 5.2%.
For albums, catalog sales (albums older than 18 months) are suffering less (-8.1%) than current albums (-14.0%). That is largely because the catalog albums saw a smaller drop in digital album sales (remember that line in Men in Black where K talks about having to buy the “White Album” again?). The sales of catalog and current albums are almost the same (126.5M vs 130.5M) with currents outselling in physical albums (73M vs 77.6M) and catalogs leading in digital (53.6M vs 52.9M) and digital tracks (569.6M vs 532.9M).
The biggest format for music? Rock at 29% of total consumption (albums 33.2%, tracks 21.3% and Streams 24.7%). Next up is R&B/Hip-Hop at 17.2% (albums 13.9%, tracks at 19.1% and streams at 28.5%). Pop has 14.9% of the market (albums 10.8%, tracks 21.1%, streams 28.5%) and Country has 11.2% (albums 11.8%, tracks 12% and streams 6.4%). What’s interesting here is that Rock and Country fans continue to buy albums, but track and streaming dwarfs album sales for Pop and R&B Hip-hop. This allows Rock/Country artists to continue to be able to craft complete story arcs on albums while I can see Pop & R&B/Hip-Hop artists being pushed harder to focus on the singles. And the Pop & R&B/Hip-Hop artists will continue to be more interested in the revenue debate from streaming.
BB Also chimes in on the report. They note that if Taylor Swift had not switched to pop, Pop sales would have been down 10.6% in 2014. Taylor lifted that drop to an increase of 0.1%. That’s right. One album made a 10.7% difference. That’s power baby! I can see why she can shake it off. Pop is the only format that saw an increase. Rock was down the least next amount with 11.2% with the sub-genre of Hard Rock falling just 5.3%. Meanwhile, R&B was down a bracing 25.1% and Hip-Hop down 24.1%. Shudder. We’ve seen that with the big Rap albums opening significantly lower than we’ve seen in past years.
Taylor Swift’s “1989” has previously been noted as the number one seller of 2014 with 3.66M in sales, but Frozen comes out on top for overall albums (sales, TEAs and SEAs). The two albums are close on album sales (Frozen 3.527M, 1989 3.661M) and Song sales (Frozen 7.982M, 1989 7.21M), but where Frozen really freezes out 1989 is with the streaming numbers (Frozen 218.997M, 1989 26.143M). In the end, Frozen has a total volume of 4.471M vs 1989’s 4.399M. I wonder what the results would have been if Taylor had left her songs on Spotify?
None of the reality singing show contestants are in the overall album chart for 2014, but they do make the sales charts. Pentatonix has the fourth best selling album with 1.139M in sales (and is one of 4 albums to sell a million in 2014 – 13 albums achieved that in 2013). One Direction is 9th on the chart with “Four” selling 814K. Pentatonix rises to 3rd on the CD sales chart with 736K in physical albums sold and drops to 9th on the digital albums chart with 403K.
The number one digital song of the year was Voice judge Pharrel William’s “Happy” with 6.455M in sales. We featured Meaghan Trainor’s “All About that Bass” video here at MJs back when it only had a few million views. It would go on to be the most viewed video on-demand in 2014 with 188.749M views.
Neilsen has lots of fun facts about how and where we listen to music. Mostly we listen in the car or while at work, so that’s probably why radio remains influential. Those 18-34 year olds love their Pop (12.3%) and Country (9.8%) formats, but they are far less fond of Classic Rock (3.9%). Consumers spend about $109 annually on music, but half of that is going to live music events. 32M went to festivals last year and those kind of people who go to festivals tend to spend more on music overall.
Does it seem like there are more Award shows these days? Nielsen knows why. Award shows used to be dropping in the ratings, but with the advent of social media, people are flocking back to the shows. People like to tweet together. The most tweeted moment of the 2014 Grammy awards was the Kendrick Lamar/Imagine Dragon performance with 143K tweets (did you know that Nielsen was even tracking that kind of data – now you do). The Billboard Music Awards saw an increase in viewers of 13% and the Country Music Awards was up 12% (kids up 14%). Who watches these shows? Mostly women in the 18-24 age group. The most tweeted minute all year? The Voice at 8:59 pm on May 13, 2014.
One Direction is number 7 on the Global Top 10 Artist chart (global Facebook Likes, Global Twitter and Global Wikipedia page views – they are watching us!). Jennifer Lopez is number 8.
