Following last week’s report revealing that U.S. recorded music sales rose 11.4% in 2016 over the previous year due to increased streaming revenue, the Q1 music numbers show the trend continuing. On-demand streaming for the first three months of 2017 tallied 133.9 billion streams, up 35.2% over the 99.1 billion streams for Q1 2016, according to Nielsen Music (via Billboard). Digital track sales decreased 23.8% from 207.9 million for Q1 2016 to 158.4 million. Ed Sheeran’s “÷" (pronounced Divide) is the top album for Q1, moving 1.1 million equivalent album units. For 2016, the music industry earned $7.65 billion, down from $13.7 million in 1998, which was the last year that the U.S. music industry saw a revenue increase in the double digits.

Source: Forbes April 06, 2017 21:22 UTC