Music Streaming Drops on the Weekend, With One Distinction

January 11, 2018

This article is included in these additional categories:

Digital | Industries | Media & Entertainment

Music streaming continued to surge last year, with streaming building on its status as the leading form of music consumption, per Nielsen’s 2017 Year-End Music Report [download page]. The study reveals the days of the week in which streaming is most popular, finding differences between on-demand audio and on-demand video streams.

Interestingly, the share of weekly on-demand audio streams grows from Monday through Friday, reaching its peak at the end of the work week, as Friday represents an average 15.3% of on-demand audio streams.

Audio streams then demonstrate a rather marked drop on the weekend, with Saturdays representing 13.8% of streams and Sundays 12.6% of audio streams.

By contrast, on-demand video streams take a different pattern. Music video streams reach their highest point on Saturdays, on which 16.3% of streams occurred last year. And while video streams drop from Saturday to Sunday (14.1% share), Sunday’s share is still higher than the Monday-to-Wednesday period.

Overall, the number of on-demand audio streams was almost double the number of on-demand video streams last year, at 400.4 billion and 217.7 billion, respectively. On-demand audio streams also grew at a much faster rate than video streams (58.7% and 20.9%, respectively).

In sum, on-demand audio streams accounted for 54% of recorded music consumption last year, measured by revenue. Streaming was particularly influential in the Latin (71%), Electronic/Dance (69%), and R&B/Hip-Hop (69%) formats, while being less of a force in the Children (26%), Holiday/Season (31%) and Jazz (32%) formats.

For the year, “Despacito” by Louis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee featuring Justin Bieber, was the top song by on-demand audio streams, with almost 600 million (595.6 million). Kendrick Lamar’s “Humble” was close behind with close to 581 million audio streams, followed by Lil Uzi Vert’s “Xo Tour Llif3” (570.8 million).

“Despacito” also led all songs in on-demand video streams, far ahead of the pack with more than 727 million video streams. Next up was Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You,” the only other to exceed 500 million video streams (508.6 million).

Adding together audio and video streams results in “Despacito” being the only song to top a billion, with 1.32 billion total on-demand streams. “Shape of You” was extremely close to hitting the mark, with 999.7 million total streams.

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