You don’t have to be an industry analyst to see that the music streaming services are booming.
The subscription platforms and online music libraries of the likes of Spotify, Pandora, Deezer et al. are already successful enough to be taking a bite out of Apple’s iTunes store, while current rates will likely see digital music completely overtaking physical in three years time.
Which is great news if you happen to write a hit that gets streamed over 4 million times in six months, which is exactly the case of the track that’s topped the Top 10 most streamed songs of the first half of 2013, according to new figures from Nielsen.
So who is the artist responsible for 438,450,000 streams? None other than forthcoming Future Music Festival 2014 act, Baauer, better known as the American trap music producer responsible for the massive meme-soundtracking ‘Harlem Shake’, as The Daily Swarm points out.
The 24-year-old producer from Pennsylvania may only have one release to his name, the 12” Dum Dum EP, but the 400 million plus streams of the bass-thumping drop dwarves any of its close competitors.
A comparison to the second most streamed song of 2013 so far, ‘Thrift Shop’ by fellow Future 2014 headliner Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, demonstrates a stark contrast, attaining over 186 million streams. The hip hop duo – one of the year’s highest paid acts – also had the ninth most streamed song with ‘Can’t Hold Us’ racking up more than 73 million streams. Music streaming services are booming… which is great news if you happen to write a hit that gets streamed over 400 million times in six months.
Even combined, Macklmore & Ryan Lewis’ 260,641,000 million hits pales in comparisons to ‘Harlem Shake’ and its 438,450,000 streams, as does another of the year’s biggest hits: Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky’. The Pharrell Williams/Nile Rodgers starring track has been streamed a combined 247,030,288 times between Spotify and YouTube, according to Pigeons And Planes.
Meanwhile, South Korean sensation Psy’s internet hit (detecting a pattern?) ‘Gangnam Style’ saw the former Future Music Festival headliner (do they know something the rest of us don’t?) earning over 150 million streams by Nielsen’s figures, followed by Bruno Mars (at 84+ million for ‘When I Was Your Man’) and Drake (84m + for ‘Started From The Bottom’) to round out the Top 5.
Meanwhile, the Nielsen figures also show that the majority of music fans are now doing their listening digitally, with the streaming figures towering over the equivalent Top 10 most played songs on radio. Bruno Mars tops the most played radio list at #1 and #2, with ‘When I Was Your Man’ and ‘Locked Out Of Heaven’ respectively, but with just 392,000 and 391,000 spins a piece; paltry compared to the astronomical streaming figures.
The streaming boon reflects the general upward trend of digital music in recent years, with David Bakula, Senior Vice President of Nielsen Entertainment noting that the company’s mid-year reports demonstrates some interesting stats.
“Streaming continues to be a tremendous growth story with over 50 Billion audio and video streams in the first six months of 2013,” adds Bakula. “Not only are we seeing massive volume of streams, but we continue to see growth on a comparable provider basis, with stream volume up 24% over the same period last year.”
“Overall sales are down slightly in the first half of 2013, but there continues to be encouraging growth in digital album sales” says Bakula, SVP Nielsen Entertainment. “Digital Albums now comprise 43% of all album sales, up from 38% at this time last year. Also, while a small percentage of the overall album sales, Vinyl LPs continue to be an amazing growth story with sales up over 33% over last year’s record-setting pace.” (Especially in Australia as previously reported)
The Top 10 Most Streamed Songs Of 2013 So Far
According to Nielsen
