genre rock

For decades, rock music dominated the sales charts, with bands like the Beatles, AC/DC, the Eagles, the Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac and Led Zeppelin among some of the top-selling acts in recorded music history. But while rock music remains the second-biggest genre in the U.S., it lags far behind market leader R&B/hip-hop and third-placed pop when it comes to streaming.
For the prior year ended Jan. 2, 2025, R&B/hip-hop led the U.S. industry with 27.2% of audio consumption units, besting rock by just 1.7%, the latter coming in at 25.5%, according to Luminate. (These figures subtract activity from titles unassigned to any genre.) But for current market share — defined by Luminate as releases from the last 18 months — rock’s share of the market slips to 11.9%, less than half of that 25.5% mark that includes catalog titles, too.

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That might help explain some of the weakness of rock’s biggest acts in the streaming era. For decades, the music industry measured success using numbers in the millions: an album or song that sold 1 million copies was a platinum record; a diamond record, at 10 million copies, was a smash success. But while those milestones still apply for albums, the streaming era means the industry measures success in the hundreds of millions — and, increasingly, in the billions for huge success stories.

That makes 1 billion annual on-demand U.S. streams a reliable barometer of success for the biggest acts in the country, with the 2 billion stream plateau seemingly the measure of superstar status. But it’s heavily skewed towards genres — like R&B/hip-hop and pop — that have thrived in the streaming format. In 2024, streaming accounted for 91.2% of U.S. album consumption unit totals, vs. 8.8% from sales; while rock leads in market share for the sales formats with 35.8%, it trails R&B/hip-hop in streaming by a whopping 10 percentage points, 19.69% to 29.78%, respectively.

Last year, 51 artist catalogs passed the 2 billion stream mark in the U.S., not including any collaborations, according to Luminate. Of those artists, only one core rock artist hit that milestone: Linkin Park, at 2.25 billion. Meanwhile, four country artists — Morgan Wallen, Zach Bryan, Luke Combs and Chris Stapleton — achieved that distinction, as did three Latin artists, Bad Bunny, Peso Pluma and Fuerza Regida. Another 11 artists that passed the 2 billion stream mark could be considered pop, including Taylor Swift (16.5 billion on-demand streams); Billie Eilish (5.16 billion); and Noah Kahan (3.2 billion). That means the vast majority of artists with over 2 billion streams in 2024 — 32, to be exact — could be considered R&B/hip-hop, led by Drake, the artist with the second-biggest stream count in the U.S. at 10.1 billion streams in 2024, down slightly from the prior year’s 11.5 billion. (Equivalent album units and streaming figures cited in this story include user generated content (UGC) on-demand streams, which are not factored into any of Billboard‘s chart rankings.)

So while it might be easy to think that rock bands like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Elton John, the Beatles, the Eagles, Metallica, Bruce Springsteen and the Rolling Stones are among the biggest artists in the U.S, the big names in R&B/hip-hop swamp the iconic rock bands when it comes to streaming counts.

For example, not only did none of the above recording acts pass the 2 billion stream mark in 2024, but none of them have hit that milestone in the last five years. By comparison, attaining the 2 billion stream milestone is fairly routine for R&B/hip-hop acts — in fact, a strong contingent of R&B/hip-hop and pop artists annually surpass even 3 billion on-demand streams each year.

Billboard analyzed more than 90 of the top acts in the U.S. and compiled an average of each act’s annual stream count over the five-year period of 2020-2024, with Taylor Swift (10.74 billion average annual streams) and Drake (9.2 billion annually) leading the way. And many of the R&B/hip-hop artists analyzed showed hugely impressive averages. For that 2020-2024 period, those artists include NBA YoungBoy, whose five-year annual average for the U.S. on-demand streams stands at 6.2 billion; Juice WRLD (4.8 billion); The Weeknd (4.6 billion); Kanye West (4.043 billion); Eminem (4.037 billion); Future (3.7 billion); Kendrick Lamar (3.3 billion); J. Cole (3.15 billion); and Travis Scott (2.79 billion), according to Billboard calculations based on Luminate data.

Among rock artists, it’s a completely different story; only in the last two to three years have some of the other big-name rock artists hit the latter milestone.

Nevertheless, of the 45 or so big-name rock acts that Billboard examined for this article, eight have achieved the 1 billion milestone in each of the past five years, and one band — Imagine Dragons — reached 2 billion twice (2.3 billion in 2022 and 2.47 billion in 2023), making it the only rock act to average north of 2 billion over the period (2.04 billion).

Of the remaining bands with five years all over the 1 billion stream mark, one of those rock acts is the most famous band in the world, the Beatles; and, at a 1.91 billion average, they are the only other rock act even close to 2 billion annual streams. The other rock acts to reach the mark every year are Queen (1.38 billion annual average streams); AC/DC (1.2 billion annual average); Linkin Park (1.5 billion average, having broken the 2 billion mark in 2024); Maroon 5 (1.73 billion); Coldplay (1.6 billion); and Twenty One Pilots (1.24 billion).

Four other rock acts averaged over 1 billion streams annually during the period, but only hit the mark four times: Metallica (1.26 billion); the Red Hot Chili Peppers (1.15 billion); Panic! At the Disco (1.1 billion); and the Eagles (nearly 1.1 billion). Elton John (1.02 billion average) hit the mark in three of the years from the five-year period, as did Elvis, whose annual average was just shy of 935 million.

The Rolling Stones (958 million annual average) and Creedence Clearwater Revival (955 million) each hit 1 billion streams twice during the past five years, while Green Day, Billy Joel and Radiohead accomplished it once.

That leaves some major names that have yet to reach the 1 billion mark. Of the bands Billboard chose to examine, that includes Led Zeppelin, who averaged nearly 931 million streams annually over the last five years; and Pink Floyd, at an annual average of 844 million streams. Guns ‘N Roses, Aerosmith, Van Halen, The Beach Boys and the Killers all averaged between 500 million and 800 million streams annually for the period, while David Bowie, the Police, Grateful Dead and Creed were between 300 million and 500 million annually.

Still, 300 million streams is nothing to sneeze at. These days, that would bring in nearly $1.6 million in master recording revenues alone, Billboard estimates.