In the United States last year, one in 125 on-demand audio streams was a Drake song, more than one in 100 digital songs purchased was a BTS track, and one in 50 albums sold was that of Taylor Swift, according to MRC. Data.
Such dominance of large groups is now common in the modern music market, which is even more consolidated around hit songs and bands than it was 20 years ago. So while escapes like Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous: the double album and long-awaited Adele 30 were the most consumed albums of the year, according to MRC Data’s 2021 year-end report released last week, and hit songs from more recent acts like “Levitating” by Dua Lipa and the “License to lead “Olivia Rodrigo’s have become synonymous successes, the continued supremacy of successful acts like Drake, Taylor Swift and BTS have driven their catalogs to massive market share.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given both the dominance of R & B / hip-hop in general and the release of his new hit album in particular, Drake was the most released artist in 2021, accounting for $ 8.6 billion. streaming audio and video on demand over the past year. , totaling 0.76% of all on-demand streams in the United States, according to MRC Data. Drake accounted for 0.8% of all on-demand audio streams in the United States in 2021, up from 0.7% the year before.
Drake racked up nearly 1.9 billion more on-demand audio streams than Swift, the nation’s second-most popular artist, who accounted for 0.61% of all on-demand audio streams. The top 10 artists with the most on-demand audio streams in 2021 – a list that also includes YoungBoy Never Broke Again, Juice WRLD, Wallen, Kanye West, The Weeknd, Rod Wave, Polo G, and Pop Smoke – accounted for 4.55 % of all these flows for the year, or just under 45 billion in total.
The percentage breakdowns are similar for video-on-demand streams, although that format is dominated by YoungBoy, the only artist to land $ 1 billion for the year. Its share of video-on-demand streams represents 0.74% of the total (up from 0.94% in 2020), exceeding the 0.5% of Drake, 0.46% of Juice WRLD, 0.45% of Eminem and 0.43% of Doja Cat. The overall top 10 – which also includes Rodrigo, Rod Wave, The Weeknd, Kevin Gates and Lil Durk – accounted for 4.49% of total video-on-demand streams in the United States in 2021, according to MRC Data.
Among the sales formats, the gaps between the best sellers and all the others are becoming much larger. Total album sales were dominated by Swift (2.4 million, 2.17%, up from 1.89% in 2020), Adele (1.6 million, 1.48%) and BTS (1.1 million , 0.97%), the only three artists to crack 1 million overall sales for the year, accounting for 4.62% of all album sales. The rest of the top 10 – a mix of younger artists like Billie Eilish and Rodrigo alongside veterans like the Beatles, Metallica, Queen, Fleetwood Mac and Pink Floyd – alone made up 4.13%, making the top 10 overall responsible for 8.75% of all US album sales
Swift and Adele are also the top two in digital album sales, accounting for 1.35% (up from 3.07% in 2020) and 1.07% of digital album sales in the United States in 2021, respectively. The top 10 is completed by Wallen, The Beatles, Chris Stapleton, Drake, Rodrigo, Carrie Underwood, West and Pink Floyd, who collectively made up 5.41% of the overall total.
Among physical formats, the top 10 takes a much larger share of the pie: 11.74% of total CD sales and 11.44% of total vinyl sales, according to MRC Data. The three main CD sellers – BTS (1 million, 2.54%, against a gigantic 3.65% in 2020), Adele (952,000, 2.35%) and Swift (898,000, 2.21%) – accounted for 7.1% of the total number of CDs sold in the United States last year, while Swift (1.1 million, 2.62%), The Beatles (659,000, 1.58%) and Eilish (587 000, 1.41%) alone accounted for 5.61% of total vinyl sales. (The Beatles led the way in 2020, with 1.9% of all vinyl sales.)
The format’s biggest dominance, in terms of raw numbers, has come in digital song sales, where BTS was the # 1 act on the run. The group sold 2.95 million digital songs in 2021 in the United States, or 1.45% of the total number of songs sold (up from 1.06% in 2020). This is most impressive in comparison: No other group has sold more than a million digital songs during the year, with Dua Lipa’s 954,000 in second place with 0.47% of total sales of digital songs, according to MRC Data.