Nielsen is out with its semi-annual report card on the state of digital audio consumption in the US. Compared to the first half of 2017 digital audio grew an astounding 25% to the equivalent of 319M albums listened to during Q1-Q2 of 2018. Digital’s continued surge is coming at the expense of downloads which dropped 22% YoY, and physical album sales which decreased 15%. As you digest these numbers consider this stat – we’re now streaming almost 8x as many album’s worth of songs as we are purchasing actual physical albums (CDs and vinyl). Imagine what that ratio will look like in another 2-3 years?
Does anyone else think it’s ironic that Nielsen is touting streaming growth while it still doesn’t have an end-to-end digital audio measurement solution? As the self-proclaimed king of all things media measurement you’d think they would have finally figured out a way to measure the entire audio marketplace, and not just be stuck in the Flintstones era on the broadcast-only side of the industry. C’mon Nielsen!
