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In 2019, U.S. listeners passed the trillion-stream mark for the first time, according to Nielsen’s annual year-end report on the music industry. There were 1.15 trillion audio and music video streams in 2019—up 29.3% from 887.4 billion streams in 2018. Read the full report via Billboard here.
Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” was the most-streamed song of the year, pulling in nearly 2.5 billion streams. That’s a billion more than the runner-up, Post Malone’s and Swae Lee’s “Sunflower,” which netted close to 1.5 billion streams. Billie Eilish’s “bad guy” and Ariana Grande’s “7 Rings” also eclipsed the billion-stream mark, with 1.3 billion and 1.1 billion streams respectively. The viral novelty hit “Baby Shark” came in fourth with 981 million streams.
Post Malone was the most-streamed artist of the year with just shy of 5.8 billion audio and video streams. Behind him were Drake (5.4 billion), Billie Eilish (4.2 billion), Taylor Swift (just short of 4 billion), and Ariana Grande (3.8 billion).
The same Nielsen report also rounded up data for the entire decade. It revealed that the Beatles’ Abbey Road was the top-selling LP of the 2010s.
Read “Is There a Fairer Way for Streaming Services to Pay Artists?” on the Pitch.