NEW YORK, January 9, 2020 – Nielsen Music/MRC Data today released its 2019 Year-End Music Report which provides an exclusive glimpse into the music industry’s leading trends, data and insights across today’s most popular platforms including streaming, social media, radio and more.

This report covers music consumption for the 12-month period beginning January 4, 2019 through January 2, 2020 (as compared to January 5, 2018-January 3, 2019).

Nielsen Music/MRC Data is the music industry’s most trusted source for insights into how fans interact with music across physical and digital platforms and services. From streaming and digital downloads to physical purchases and live events, Nielsen Music/MRC Data’s world-class research and data-driven music products provide a clear view into trends impacting the industry, giving music business leaders and artists a more complete picture of market performance.

This year’s report also marks the beginning of a new era for Nielsen Music, which on December 17, 2019 was acquired by Valence Media as the anchor unit for the company’s newly established MRC Data division. The acquisition reunites the industry’s leading music consumption platform with the preeminent Billboard charts, after a near-decade long separation, to create the most comprehensive global provider of data and analytics to the music industry and consumers, servicing and representing all digital service providers (DSPs), record labels, radio, and music retailers.

According to Nielsen Music/MRC Data, the music industry experienced significant overall growth in 2019 with U.S. audio and video on-demand streams, surpassing 1 trillion for the first time on November 25 and ending the year at 1.15 trillion total streams. This was led by highly consumed singles and albums by both new and established artists such as Post Malone, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and Lizzo. Total album equivalent audio consumption was up 11.4% over 2018, driven by a 24% increase in on-demand audio song streams compared to last year. The top-streamed on-demand song (audio and video combined) is Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” with 2.5 billion total streams. The song, which topped the Billboard Hot 100 for a historic 19 weeks, also led total song consumption (digital song sales with streaming equivalent on-demand audio) with 8.7 million song equivalent units, including more than 1 billion on-demand audio streams and more than 1.5 million song sales.

Key Year-End Insights (through week-ending 1/2/20):

Artists who Broke Through
2019 was a big year for Post Malone, Billie Eilish, and Lizzo, who all broke records and bucked industry standards. Post Malone ruled the year with two No. 1 Hot 100 singles (“Sunflower” and “Circles”) and claimed the year’s most popular and top-streamed album, Hollywood’s Bleeding. That title collected 365.4 million on-demand audio streams for its songs in its first week, the year’s biggest streaming week for any album. “Sunflower” (nearly 1.5 billion on-demand streams), “Wow.” (918 million on-demand streams) and “Circles” (426 million on-demand streams) are three of the biggest hits from the album, and rank as the Nos. 2, 3 and 26 most-consumed songs of the year, respectively.

Billie Eilish, who turned 18 in December, became the youngest-ever artist to be named Billboard's Woman of the Year as well as earn nominations in all of the Grammys' top four categories. She made her awards show debut with a standout performance at November's American Music Awards. When her debut full-length album, When We Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, debuted it earned 313,000 equivalent units in its first week, making it the second-largest debut week for a female in 2019.

2019 was a breakout year for Lizzo as well. The 31-year-old singer/songwriter/flutist achieved success after many years trying to break through. Undeniably, having "Truth Hurts" featured in the Netflix romantic comedy "Someone Great" propelled her to stardom. The 2017 single saw a 797% spike in consumption the week ending April 25, following the movie's premiere on Netflix. The song finished the year with 736 million streams, and tied Iggy Azalea’s record for most weeks (seven) spent at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for a rap song by a female artist.

K-Pop Won’t Stop: Surprising U.S. Fan Insights
K-Pop continued its global domination in 2019 with such acts as BTS, BLACKPINK, NCT 127 and SuperM. The latter took the U.S. by storm when the group's 7-track project The 1st Mini Album became the fourth Korean-language album to top the Billboard 200 with 168,000 first week equivalent album units in October.

Nielsen Music/MRC Data Goes Global
2019 marked Nielsen Music/MRC Data’s first year of measuring consumption activity globally. Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road”’s Stateside breakthrough fueled billions of streams in other territories, enough to make it the year’s most globally streamed song on audio platforms by a considerable margin. One of the year’s most-streamed songs on video platforms? "Baby Shark," by Pinkfong, whose cover of the decades-old nursery rhyme made the song a massive viral hit in 2019.

ABOUT VALENCE MEDIA
Valence Media is a global media company with divisions in television, film, live entertainment, non-fiction, media and data. The company’s leading studios MRC Film and MRC Television produce critically-acclaimed and award-winning content alongside some of the industry’s foremost creative artists. The studios’ projects include the current box office hit and Golden Globe nominated film “Knives Out,” as well as past films including “Ted” and “Babel,” and television series including the Emmy Award winning series “Ozark,” groundbreaking “House of Cards,” and upcoming projects “The Outsider” and “The Great.” Valence Media’s dick clark productions is the largest producer and proprietor of television live-event programming broadcasts including the “Golden Globe Awards,” “Billboard Music Awards,” “American Music Awards” and the “Academy of Country Music Awards,” among others. The media division, which includes the entertainment industry’s flagship media brand The Hollywood Reporter and the world’s most influential music media brand Billboard, reaches more than 36 million people a month and garners more than 2 billion annual online video views. The company recently established MRC Data with the acquisition of Nielsen music’s data and insights product suite. Valence Media had minority investments in A24, Fulwell 73 and T-Street.