Last month, The Weeknd graced the cover of FORBES under an apt headline: Streaming Grows Up. Nielsen released its latest annual midyear music report, and thus far in 2017, on-demand audio streams topped 184 billion, up 62.4% over the same time period last year. When video streams are added to the equation, the total soars to 284 billion streams, an increase of 36.4% versus the first half of 2016. “The first half of 2017 has seen some incredible new benchmarks for the music industry,” said David Bakula, Nielsen's SVP of Music Industry Insights, in a statement. Coming in at third is Drake's More Life, which clocked a total of 1.69 million, setting a single-week record 385 million on-demand audio streams during its March launch.

Source: Forbes July 05, 2017 17:15 UTC