Luminate
Billboard‘s data partner Luminate has launched a new tool designed to measure artists’ influence for brand partnerships and more, the company announced Tuesday (Oct. 8).
Informed by Luminate’s industry-leading streaming data — which is pulled from all major music streaming platforms including Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music — along with its global consumer research insights, the tool, dubbed the Luminate Index, will provide “influence scores” for artists based on five areas: their music streaming footprint; their social media footprint; public awareness of the artist; their public appeal; and overall fan engagement in relation to their live shows and other events.
The tool was developed to allow brands, agencies, labels and others to help evaluate artists in terms of partnerships, endorsements, marketing campaigns, creative integration and more.
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According to Luminate, the 10 highest artist scores from the first iteration of the Luminate index for Q3 of 2024 are (out of 100):
Taylor Swift, 100
Adele, 92
Beyoncé, 91
Elton John, 90
Rihanna, 90
Eminem, 89
Shakira, 88
Ariana Grande, 88
Lady Gaga, 88
Dolly Parton, 87
In addition to the announcement of the index, Luminate revealed a new deal through which it will provide high-level insights and consultation to Sony Audio. According to a press release, Luminate has been “tasked with aligning deeper cultural connections between the [Sony] brand with relevant audiences across all forms of entertainment.”
“Existing at the center of all things entertainment and data, Luminate is uniquely positioned to see and analyze information that is invaluable in identifying cultural trends,” said Rob Jonas, CEO at Luminate, in a statement. “Beyond measurement, a job we take very seriously when it comes to verifying final data for the weekly Billboard Charts and the new Streaming Original Charts with Variety, we are a company that can extract insights across all areas of entertainment and fan engagement. Our goal with this new tool is to provide artists, brands, labels, talent representatives and more with intelligence that will allow them to make more informed business decisions.”
Added Jordy Freed, head of brand, business development & strategy, personal entertainment business at Sony Corporation of America: “As an audio brand heavily focused on music, entertainment, and culture, verifiable proprietary data has never been more important given the current speed of trends. Luminate is a proven leader in harnessing data and insights to demonstrate tangible customer behavior across music, film, and television. We are incredibly excited to be a ‘Day-One’ Luminate brand partner, which equips us with invaluable tools to strengthen our cultural compass and benchmark our investments connecting to fandoms.”
You can learn more about the Luminate Index here.
Latin music is the fastest-growing core music genre in the U.S., according to Luminate’s 2024 Midyear Music Report, released last week. And the power driver behind the growth is regional Mexican music.
When ranking by share point growth for the first half of 2024 compared to the first half of 2023, Latin music outpaced genres like country, pop and rock. Latin — which is not a genre per se, but is the name given to music performed predominantly in Spanish — registered a 15.1% growth in on-demand audio streaming volume. This resulted in a total share point growth of 0.51% for the first half of 2024, far more than rock and pop (whose share growth was less than 0.3%) or country and Christian (with a less than 0.2% share growth).
Latin music’s growth has been fueled by two major factors. One is the growth of regional Mexican music, which is now the largest Latin subgenre in the U.S. The other is the fact that new music releases are streamed at a far bigger scale in Latin than in any other genre of music, suggesting that young Latin listeners are over-consuming music, a fact that has been measured by Luminate in different Latin countries before.
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Courtesy of Luminate
According to Luminate, on-demand audio streams of regional Mexican music for the first half of 2024 stood at 13.2 million streams. That was more than Latin pop (12 million streams), Latin rhythm (10.8 million streams) and Latin tropical (2.4 million streams).
When looking at Luminate’s comparison of the “release age” composition for genre, Latin’s consumption of current music — music released within the prior 18 months — outpaces all other genres significantly. Latin genre streaming leans the most current at 35%, followed by country at around 30%. In comparison, R&B/hip-hop current streaming is at 25%. By the same token, deep catalog streaming — defined by Luminate as music older than 60 months — is lowest for Latin (close to 40%) when compared to other genres; in rock, for example, 70.5% of streams come from music older than 60 months.
The stats for Latin music are even more remarkable considering that 32% of its streams come from ad-supported on-demand video or audio, more than all other genres. This means the number of average streams needed to equal an album equivalent is higher for Latin than for other kinds of music, whose streaming consumption of premium streams is higher.
Regional Mexican, which encompasses a broad range of Mexican music subgenres, including norteño, banda, mariachi and corridos, had been the leading subgenre of Latin music in the U.S. for decades, in part because people of Mexican descent account for the vast majority of the Latin population in the country. According to the Pew Research Center, in 2022, there were approximately 37.4 million people of Mexican origin living in the United States, making up nearly 60% of the country’s Hispanic population, a percentage that’s remained relatively unchanged for decades.
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Courtesy of Luminate
But when reggaetón took over Latin music’s charts 20 years ago, the popularity of regional Mexican declined. Now, fueled by an infusion of brash new acts, regional Mexican is dominating charts and consumption.
According to Luminate, four Latin artists earned more than 100 million U.S. on-demand audio streams through the first half of 2024. Outside of Bad Bunny, who is the No. 1-streaming Latin music artist overall, those other three were Regional Mexican artists: Peso Pluma, Fuerza Regida and Junior H.
The growth of regional Mexican in the U.S. reflects a broader international trend. According to the report, Mexico is the top country to grow in global audio streaming share (based on artist country of origin), jumping from 5.29% in 2023 to 6.03% in 2024.
This suggests the base of Mexican music, and Mexican fandom, is not only strong, but has vast room for growth, continuing to fuel consumption in the U.S. and beyond.
At the midway point of 2024, the recorded music business is in fine form. Streaming is growing, physical purchases remain strong and download purchases are so few that any declines are barely noticeable amidst streaming’s success.
Billboard has already reported the major takeaways from Luminate’s midyear report — you can read a main article here and a follow-up article with more observations here — but a document filled with so much data, augmented by market research, merits another story. Below you can find five additional insights from the report (which you can download a copy of here).
Putting Digital Into Perspective
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Digital’s share of the market rose slightly to 95.3% of equivalent album units (EAUs), up from 95.2% at midyear 2023, 92.3% at midyear 2022 and 91.2% at midyear 2021. If that seems higher than some other figures you’ve spotted at Billboard, don’t worry. Because Luminate tracks only sales and purchases, comparing its data to other available data is like comparing apples and oranges. Public companies that report recorded music revenues have a lower digital share than Luminate’s consumption-based numbers. At Universal Music Group, digital’s global share was 69.8% in 2023, while at Warner Music Group it was 67.0%. Those companies’ digital shares are lower than what’s found in the Luminate report for a couple reasons. First, both companies get more than 10% of their recorded music revenue from physical sales globally (16% for UMG, 11% for WMG). Second, music companies group record labels with merchandise, various licensing revenues and expanded rights revenues — things not tracked by Luminate
Luminate’s digital share is also higher than the RIAA’s widely observed industry numbers, which had digital at 86.4% of recorded music revenue in the U.S. in 2023. But the RIAA tracks a few things that Luminate doesn’t. That includes SoundExchange collections (encompassing satellite radio and cable music services such as Music Choice and Stingray), which last year accounted for 5.8% of total revenue; and synchronization royalties, which accounted for 2.4%.
Long Live the Album
Not many years ago, the album was declared dead and some people predicted single-track releases would become standard. Sure, the album has been forever unbundled, and artists tend to release individual tracks ahead of an album’s release. Yet the format continues to thrive. At the midway point of 2022, four albums had more than 1 million equivalent album units. Last year, five albums had surpassed that threshold by June 30. And this year, seven albums topped 1 million EAUs.
As Billboard’s Dan Rys noted earlier this week, this year’s top album, Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department, did especially well, boasting 2.6 times as many EAUs as the No. 2 album, Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time. To be fair, though, One Thing at a Time has had incredibly longevity: It was the No. 1 album in the first half of 2023, and its 3.31 million EAUs in that period were only 29% less than TTPD’s 4.67 million units in the first half of 2024.
Notably, sales are a major part of the consumption pie for some of the top albums. In the case of TTPD, more than half (53%) of total EAUs came from purchases. Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, the No. 4 album, got 23.3% of EAUs from purchases.
Catalog Didn’t Kill Current Music
Catalog’s share of total EAUs was 72.8% — exactly equal to the prior-year period. This ends a run of increasing catalog market share that led to much — and some might say unnecessary — handwringing over the popularity of current music being released by record labels. By comparison, catalog’s share was 72.4% at midyear 2022 and 69.4% at midyear 2021. (Luminate classifies catalog music as being more than 18 months old.) Not all catalog music could be considered “old,” of course. Swift’s 2019 album Lover, which was No. 10 overall and No. 5 in album sales at the midyear mark this year, falls into the catalog category. So does her 2020 album Folklore, which ranked No. 8 in album sales. SZA’s SOS, released in December 2022, reached catalog status in June even though it was the No. 5 album on the midyear 2024 chart with 1.06 million EAUs. These are examples of “shallow” catalog that have achieved a degree of longevity, not “deep” catalog such as reissues and golden oldies.
Latin Music Has a Chart Disadvantage
Latin music streaming is 32% ad-supported, far below the 19.6% average for all genres and less than half the 12.9% of country music. That matters for both chart position and industry revenues, as premium streams produce greater per-stream royalties than ad-supported streams. In addition, premium streams are weighted more heavily when determining chart position. To compare albums and tracks that are consumed in a variety of formats — physical albums, downloads and streams — Luminate converts streams into EAUs, and ad-supported streams convert to EAUs at a lower rate than premium streams do. It makes sense: Ad-supported streams produce lower per-stream royalties than premium streams. Given Latin music’s relatively high percentage of ad-supported streams, that’s bad news for the genre, whose streams convert to EAUs at about 1,500 streams per EAU — much higher than country and pop, which have the lowest genre conversion rate at about 1,360 streams per EAU. Latin’s high proportion of ad-supported streaming also matters because it tends to under-index in terms of sales: No other genre has lower digital track sales, digital album sales and physical album sales as a percentage of EAUs.
Big Populations, Small Revenue
Developing markets have huge populations but relatively little revenue. India, which has a population of 1.4 billion and 659 million smartphone users, has the lowest proportion of premium streams in the 49 countries tracked by Luminate: Just 9.7% of all on-demand audio and video streams in the country are premium streams, which means 92.3% of all streams come from ad-supported streaming. With a population of 275 million, Indonesia is the fourth most-populated country worldwide, but in terms of music streaming, the country has the second-lowest proportion of premium streams at 15.5%. Globally, the average premium share is 57.5% and is highest in European countries, including Norway (93.5%), Iceland (92.9%), Sweden (89.6%), Netherlands (87.6%) and Denmark (87.1%).
In several different ways, the modern era of the U.S. recorded music business can date its origins to the year 2015. That was the year that Apple Music and TIDAL debuted in the United States; the year that streaming finally matured, taking up the baton as the dominant revenue stream among all formats in the country; and the year that, after more than a decade of decline, the business finally began to see its first shoots of growth, kicking off an upward trend that has still, 10 years later, not abated.
This week, Luminate released its annual midyear report on the U.S. business, providing a relatively convenient bookend to the first 10 years of what can reasonably be referred to as the official streaming era. The midyear charts threw up a few surprises (the enduring success of Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things” led to it becoming the most-streamed song of 2024 so far) and some more obvious conclusions (Taylor Swift, of course, dominated the album charts with The Tortured Poets Department).
But it also revealed several milestones and achievements that have not happened in the past 10 years of the Luminate (and, prior to it, MRC Data and Nielsen) reports. So with the caveat that it’s still just the midway mark, and release dates and other factors weigh more heavily in smaller sample sizes, here are five stats that demonstrate that the first half of 2024 has been the most unusual year of the past decade.
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The Sheer Scale of Taylor’s Dominance
Swift’s Tortured Poets Department easily outstripped every other album at the midyear mark, having spent 12 of the 26 weeks of the year so far atop the Billboard 200. But at the midyear mark, its dominance could also be referred to as historic compared to the past 10 years. At 4.66 million equivalent album units, TTPD has outstripped the No. 2 album, Morgan Wallen’s One Thing At a Time, by more than double — and nearly triple — the latter’s 1.776 million, with a total that’s 2.62 times higher than Wallen’s album (which, to be fair, was released in March 2023).
That’s the first time in the past decade that the No. 1 album’s first-half total doubled, much less more than doubled, the No. 2 album. The differential between the two, 2.884 million units, is over 1.5 million more than the disparity between any other top two albums over the time period, with 2023 being the only other year the disparity topped 1 million units. (Last year, Wallen’s One Thing At a Time came in at 3.312 million units, 1.33 million more than SZA’s SOS.) The closest race of the past 10 years? That’d be in 2017 when Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. edged out Ed Sheeran’s divide by just 23,000 units at the midway mark.
The No. 1 Song Didn’t Reach No. 1 on the Hot 100
Boone’s “Beautiful Things” was an early breakout story this year, as the singer seemed to explode out of nowhere with the biggest hit of his career so far. The song got off to a flying start, debuting at No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 in January — and then spent all but two weeks in the top 10 of the chart, landing at No. 1 for the most-streamed song of the year so far on Luminate’s mid-year tally.
The only quirk? “Beautiful Things” peaked at No. 2 on the Hot 100, never quite reaching No. 1. Given that, it may seem odd that it finished No. 1 in streams at the midyear point, though that can be explained by its sustained dominance in the top 10 and its early-year debut, which gave it the full six months to rack up all those streams. What is odd, however, is that it’s the only song in the past decade that landed at No. 1 at the midyear mark and also never reached the top of the Hot 100. In fact, every other year since 2015, the top song halfway through the year had spent at least five weeks in the top slot — ranging from the Encanto cast’s “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” in 2022 (five weeks) to Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk!” in 2015, which hit 14 weeks. (Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” No. 1 at the halfway mark in 2019, ultimately spent 19 weeks at No. 1, though it was only halfway through that run at the midyear point.)
Midyear No. 1 Songs by On-Demand Streams (Weeks at No. 1)2023: Miley Cyrus, “Flowers” (8 weeks)2022: Encanto Cast, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” (5 weeks)2021: Olivia Rodrigo, “Drivers License” (8 weeks)2020: Roddy Ricch, “The Box” (11 weeks)2019: Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” (19 weeks)2018: Drake, “God’s Plan” (11 weeks)2017: Ed Sheeran, “Shape Of You” (12 weeks)2016: Rihanna feat. Drake, “Work” (9 weeks)2015: Mark Ronson feat. Bruno Mars, “Uptown Funk!” (14 weeks)
Warner Records Lands Top 3 Songs
About those top-streamed songs? Boone’s was No. 1, followed by Zach Bryan feat. Kacey Musgraves with “I Remember Everything” and Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” at Nos. 2 and 3. All of those songs were released by Warner Records, giving the label a trifecta. No other label has had the top three songs at the midyear mark in the past decade, giving Warner sole possession of the feat in this era.
A few labels have come close, however: in 2022, Atlantic Records had the top song (“We Don’t Talk About Bruno”), the No. 4 song (Kodak Black’s “Super Gremlin”) and had one of its stars, Jack Harlow, on the No. 2 song (Lil Nas X and Harlow’s “Industry Baby”, which was released on X’s label Columbia). In 2018, Republic Records had three of the top four, with one of its artists, Drake, on the No. 3 song: Blocboy JB feat. Drake, “Look Alive.” However, “Look Alive” came out on Drake’s label OVO Sound, which was distributed by Warner at the time. In 2016, Def Jam had Nos. 2 and 3 (Desiigner’s “Panda” and Justin Bieber’s “Sorry,” respectively) and a distribution deal with Roc Nation, which put out the No. 1 song, Rihanna’s “Work” featuring Drake — though Def Jam didn’t technically release it.
Republic Records Lands Top 3 Albums
Not to be outdone, the top of the midyear albums chart also threw up a trifecta for a label: Republic Records, which released Swift and Wallen’s albums (the latter in partnership with Big Loud), as well as the No. 3 album, Noah Kahan’s Stick Season (in partnership with Mercury). Somewhat surprisingly, given Republic’s recent dominance in the market share standings as well as the overall dominance of Wallen and Swift in recent years, this is the first time Republic has taken the top three slots at the midyear mark — and, over the past decade, the only time any label has held down the top three at this point in the year.
The only time another label came close was, unsurprisingly, Republic. In 2023, the label had four of the top five albums of the year at the midway mark, but it was thwarted from claiming the top three by SZA’s SOS, which was released by Top Dawg/RCA.
Just Five Albums in the Top 10 Came Out Within the Past 12 Months
The top 10 albums chart by equivalent units served up plenty of familiar titles this year: Swift, Wallen, Kahan, SZA and Bryan, as well as albums from Beyoncé (Cowboy Carter, No. 4) and Future & Metro Boomin (We Don’t Trust You, No. 6). But incredibly, only five of the top 10 were released within the past 12 months: Swift’s TTPD, Beyoncé’s Carter and Future & Metro’s Trust, all of which came out in 2024. Bryan’s self-titled album, which finished at No. 8, was released last August, while Swift’s No. 9-ranking 1989 (Taylor’s Version), a re-recording of an album that came out in 2014, was released last October. That’s the fewest number of titles in the top 10 of any midyear consumption chart in the past 10 years to have been released within the prior 12 months (dating back to the midyear mark of the year before), with no other year going back to 2015 serving up fewer than six.
In fact, that number has been steadily dropping for a half-decade now: Since 2019, when nine of the top 10 were released within the prior 12 months, there have been nine (2020), seven (2021), seven (2022) and six (2023) in the top 10. (In 2017, all 10 fit the criteria.) The streaming era has done many things for the music business, but one thing it has done more than any other is to expose people’s listening habits rather than buying habits. And the consumption numbers of current (releases within the past 18 months) vs. catalog (releases older than 18 months) have borne out the by-now long-established trend that catalog rules consumption: This year, Luminate calculated that catalog listening accounted for 72.8% of listening share, a figure that remained the same as it was at the midway point in 2023.
But the sheer staying power of some of these top 10 albums is what’s most impressive. Wallen’s One Thing At a Time is over a year old by now; but his 2021 album, Dangerous: The Double Album, is still at No. 7. SZA’s SOS, No. 2 at the midyear mark last year, came in at No. 5. Kahan’s Stick Season originally came out in October 2022. 1989 (Taylor’s Version) is a collection of songs that, in their original form, date back a decade. And at No. 10, Swift’s Lover is approaching its fifth anniversary in August.
Will the charts remain so static in the future? Is it a product of the maturation of the streaming age? Or is it just that these albums are simply so dominant that they elbowed out all others? It’s something to keep an eye on.
In the first half of 2024 in the United States, Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department was the most popular album, while Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things” was the most-streamed song (by on-demand audio streams), respectively, according to data tracking firm Luminate.
Read more about midyear metrics in the 2024 Luminate Midyear Music Report.
‘Poets’ Perched on Top: For the tracking period of Dec. 29, 2023, through June 27, 2024, Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department was the most popular album in the U.S. The pop superstar’s studio set was released on April 19 via Republic Records and earned 4.66 million equivalent album units in the first half of 2024. (See full top 10 chart, below.) Poets spent its first 12 weeks atop the weekly Billboard 200 chart – the first album by a woman to spend its first 12 weeks at No. 1.
Poets is also the top-selling album, by traditional album sales, at the midyear point, with 2.47 million sold. The set is the top-selling album on CD (1.07 million), vinyl (988,000) and digital download (395,000) of 2024’s first six months.
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The most-streamed song by on-demand audio streams (inclusive of user-generated content [UGC] streams) was Boone’s breakout hit “Beautiful Things,” with 448.7 million clicks in the first six months of the year. “Beautiful Things,” released via Night Street/Warner Records, marked Boone’s first top 40-charting hit on the weekly Billboard Hot 100 chart, and peaked at No. 2 on the tally in March.
Equivalent album units – for album titles and chart rankings cited below (but not industry volume numbers) – comprise traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sales, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album, or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official and audio streams generated by songs from an album.
Equivalent album units cited for album titles in this story, and in the “Midyear Top 10 Albums in U.S.” chart do not include user-generated content (UGC) streams. UGC streams are included in Luminate’s industry volume numbers and its midyear song streaming rankings. (UGC streams are not factored into any of Billboard’s weekly charts.)
For the sake of clarity, equivalent album units do not include listening to music on broadcast radio or digital radio broadcasts. All numbers cited in this story are rounded, and for the U.S. only. Programmed streams are not included in any of the data in this story.
Luminate (formerly MRC Data, Nielsen Music and SoundScan) began tracking music consumption in 1991. Luminate’s sales, streaming and airplay data is used to compile Billboard’s weekly charts.
Of The Tortured Poets Department’s 4.66 million equivalent album units earned at midyear, album sales comprise 2.47 million, SEA units comprise 2.16 million (equaling 2.82 billion on-demand official audio and video streams of the 31 songs on the deluxe edition of the album) and TEA units comprise 23,000.
The top five most popular albums at the midyear point in the U.S. are The Tortured Poets Department, Morgan Wallen’s March 2023 release One Thing at a Time (1.78 million), Noah Kahan’s October 2022 release Stick Season (1.22 million), Beyoncé’s March release Cowboy Carter (1.10 million) and SZA’s December 2022 release SOS (1.06 million). In 2023, One Thing at a Time and SOS were the Nos. 1 and 3 most popular albums of the year in Luminate’s year-end report.
2024’s Midyear Top 10 Albums in U.S. (by Equivalent Album Units)1. Taylor Swift, The Tortured Poets Department (4.660 million)2. Morgan Wallen, One Thing at a Time (1.776 million)3. Noah Kahan, Stick Season (1.224 million)4. Beyoncé, Cowboy Carter (1.105 million)5. SZA, SOS (1.064 million)6. Future & Metro Boomin, We Don’t Trust You (1.046 million)7. Morgan Wallen, Dangerous: The Double Album (1.010 million)8. Zach Bryan, Zach Bryan (984,000)9. Taylor Swift, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) (953,000)10. Taylor Swift, Lover (948,000)Source: Luminate, for the tracking period Dec. 29, 2023, through June 27, 2024. UGC (user-generated content) streams are not included in this chart, but are included in Luminate’s on-demand streaming charts (below). Luminate’s equivalent album unit totals include SEA and TEA for an album’s songs registered before an album’s release, but only during the tracking period.
2024’s Midyear Top 10 Selling Albums in U.S. (Physical & Digital Album Sales Combined)1. Taylor Swift, The Tortured Poets Department (2.474 million)2. Billie Eilish, Hit Me Hard and Soft (306,000)3. Beyoncé, Cowboy Carter (257,000)4. Taylor Swift, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) (250,000)5. Taylor Swift, Lover (208,000)6. TOMORROW X TOGETHER, Minisode 3: TOMORROW (193,000)7. ATEEZ, Golden Hour: Part.1 (191,000)8. Taylor Swift, Folklore (174,000)9. TWICE, With YOU-th (174,000)10. Taylor Swift, Midnights (171,000)Source: Luminate, for the tracking period Dec. 29, 2023, through June 27, 2024.
2024’s Midyear Top 10 Selling Vinyl Albums1. Taylor Swift, The Tortured Poets Department (988,000)2. Billie Eilish, Hit Me Hard and Soft (160,000)3. Taylor Swift, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) (117,000)4. Taylor Swift, Folklore (108,000)5. Taylor Swift, Lover (106,000)6. Taylor Swift, Midnights (100,000)7. Beyoncé, Cowboy Carter (94,000)8. Taylor Swift, Evermore (88,000)9. Noah Kahan, Stick Season (87,000)10. Olivia Rodrigo, Guts (74,000)Source: Luminate, for the tracking period Dec. 29, 2023, through June 27, 2024.
Total Album Consumption Increases 7.4% at Midyear: Year-to-date, total equivalent album units grew by 7.4% (to 527.3 million) as compared to the same time frame in 2023 (491.1 million in the span of Dec. 30, 2022, through June 29, 2023). However, Luminate notes in its midyear report that due to changes in methodology and provider reporting, a trend break occurred in the first half of 2024, and they are unable to provide an accurate representation of year-over-year changes with regards to independent retail physical sales. In turn, for the above total equivalent album unit comparison, sales from independent retail stores are excluded from both the midyear 2024 and 2023 numbers above as there is no comparable historical data to provide an accurate year-over-year trend. Indie store album sales are included in the top 10 album rankings in this story. (In January 2024, Luminate retired a weighted data modeling method that previously measured physical sales in the indie retail sector. In April, Luminate launched a partnership with data provider StreetPulse to collect music sales from independent retailers.)
On-Demand Audio Streaming Up 8%, ‘Beautiful Things’ Most-Streamed Song: Boone’s “Beautiful Things” was the most-streamed song by on-demand audio streams in the first half of 2024 in the U.S. (see list, below), with 448.7 million streams (inclusive of UGC). Zach Bryan’s “I Remember Everything,” featuring Kacey Musgraves (437.3 million) and Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” (409.7 million) round out the top three.
Total on-demand audio streams at midyear grew 8% in the U.S. as compare to the same point a year ago (665.8 billion versus 616.5 billion).
UGC streams are included in Luminate’s industry streaming on-demand volume numbers (above) and its midyear streaming song charts (below). UGC streams are not factored into any of Billboard’s weekly charts.
In general, all songs in the below charts combine the assorted remixes of a song into one overall total.
2024’s Midyear Top 10 Most Streamed Songs in U.S. (On-Demand Audio)1. Benson Boone, “Beautiful Things” (448.7 million)2. Zach Bryan featuring Kacey Musgraves, “I Remember Everything” (437.3 million)3. Teddy Swims, “Lose Control” (409.7 million)4. Tommy Richman, “Million Dollar Baby” (374.9 million)5. Future, Metro Boomin & Kendrick Lamar, “Like That” (374.9 million)6. Kendrick Lamar, “Not Like Us” (362.1 million)7. Noah Kahan, “Stick Season” (342.9 million)8. Jack Harlow, “Lovin On Me” (340.8 million)9. Shaboozey, “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” (333.1 million)10. Hozier, “Too Sweet” (333.1 million)Source: Luminate, for the tracking period Dec. 29, 2023, through June 27, 2024. Includes UGC streams.
Digital Song Sales Fall 11%: Digital song sales declined 10.9% in the first six months of 2024, falling to 61.96 million, as compared to 69.57 million sold in the first half of 2023. The top-selling digital song at the midyear point is Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” with 219,000 sold.2023’s Midyear Top 10 Selling Digital Songs in U.S.1. Shaboozey, “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” (219,000)2. Benson Boone, “Beautiful Things” (200,000)3. Teddy Swims, “Lose Control” (195,000)4. Beyoncé, “Texas Hold ‘Em” (178,000)5. Post Malone featuring Morgan Wallen, “I Had Some Help” (156,000)6. Megan Thee Stallion, “Hiss” (107,000)7. Jack Harlow, “Lovin On Me” (95,000)8. Tom MacDonald & Ben Shapiro, “Facts” (93,000)9. Eminem, “Houdini” (88,000)10. Hozier, “Too Sweet” (85,000)Source: Luminate, for the tracking period Dec. 29, 2023, through June 27, 2024.
Harlow Hot at Radio: The most-heard song on U.S. radio in the first half of 2024 was Harlow’s “Lovin On Me,” with a cumulative 1.743 million audience impressions across all formats monitored by Luminate. “Flowers,” with a cumulative 2.409 billion audience impressions across all formats monitored by Luminate. The track led Billboard’s weekly Radio Songs airplay chart for 12 consecutive weeks (from Jan. 27, 2024 through April 13, 2024).
2024’s Midyear Top 10 Radio Songs in U.S. (Based on Audience Impressions)1. Jack Harlow, “Lovin On Me” (1.743 billion)2. Teddy Swims, “Lose Control” (1.692 billion)3. Doja Cat, “Agora Hills” (1.544 billion)4. Taylor Swift, “Cruel Summer” (1.402 billion)5. Tate McRae, “Greedy” (1.388 billion)6. Luke Combs, “Fast Car” (1.248 billion)7. Tyla, “Water” (1.210 billion)8. Benson Boone, “Beautiful Things” (1.142 billion)9. Sabrina Carpenter, “Feather” (1.123 billion)10. SZA, “Snooze” (1.111 billion)Source: Luminate, for the tracking period Dec. 29, 2023, through June 27, 2024.
Halfway through 2024, it’s once again Taylor Swift’s world, and we’re all just living in it. At the midway point of the year, her Tortured Poets Department album is the biggest release of 2024 so far by a huge margin, having spent nine of the 13 weeks of the second quarter atop the Billboard 200. That helped her label, Republic Records, best the entire Warner Music Group in current market share for the year through June 27, contributing to Republic’s 15.72% mark — by far the best among individual labels.
However, Swift is far from the only factor. Republic’s market share also includes Mercury Records, Big Loud Records and Island Records (as well as indie distributor Imperial and Cash Money), and each of those labels is also on fire in the first half: Mercury’s Post Malone has collaborated with Swift, Beyoncé, Blake Shelton and Big Loud’s Morgan Wallen on big singles (the latter of which, “I Had Some Help,” spent six weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100), while Island’s Sabrina Carpenter has dominated the singles charts of late and the same label’s Chappell Roan has emerged as one of the artist stories of the year. Each of the three labels, if broken out on their own, would have made the top 15 of the midyear current market share chart, while Island in particular logged a midyear mark (1.29%) that was more than double its share at the same point last year, and represents its highest midpoint stake since 2018.
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That surge from Republic, which is up more than 3% from the 12.42% current share it posted midway through 2023, helped boost the Universal Music Group’s industry-leading current market share up to 36.37% at the halfway mark, up from the 34.48% it had the same period last year. In turn, Sony Music Entertainment’s current share came in at 26.07%, down from 27.54% halfway through 2023; while the Warner Music Group’s 15.68% dipped from the 17.26% it enjoyed midway through last year. The indie sector, by distribution ownership, grew more than a percentage point to 21.88%, up from 20.72%. By label ownership, the indie community remained the biggest sector of the business, with a 39.12% current share and a 37.35% overall share, both of which are slightly down year over year but relatively static.
Among individual labels, beyond Republic, Interscope Geffen A&M (whose market share also includes Verve Label Group) also had a strong quarter. The label came in at 9.51% in current share, also up a large margin from the 8.08% it posted halfway through 2023, with Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard And Soft leading the way. Taking into account the realignment of UMG’s label structure under the Interscope Capitol Labels Group on the West Coast, within which Capitol now reports up to ICLG chief John Janick, and Republic Recording Company on the East Coast, which includes Def Jam among the additional labels that report in to Monte Lipman, ICLG’s current market share would come in at 13.54% halfway through the year, with Republic Recording Company at 16.36%.
Outside those two labels, Warner Records — which includes Warner Latin, catalog label Rhino and some share from Warner Nashville — has continued its hot streak from the first quarter, as singles by Benson Boone (“Beautiful Things”), Teddy Swims (“Lose Control”) and Zach Bryan (last year’s “I Remember Everything” with Kacey Musgraves) remain among the biggest songs of 2024. Notably, Warner’s 6.30% current share — which keeps it in third place among labels — comes even before the impact of Bryan’s latest album, The Great American Bar Scene, given that it was released after the half-year tracking period. That’s easily Warner’s best midyear mark in years and an improvement over 2023’s 5.62%, when it ranked fifth.
Coming in fourth is Atlantic, at a 5.24% current share, which is both down significantly from the 7.34% it posted halfway through 2023 and up slightly from the 5.14% current share it had in the first quarter, as Jack Harlow’s former No. 1 “Lovin On Me” remains among the top songs of the year. (Atlantic’s share includes the 300 Elektra Music Group.) Fifth place, with a 4.59% current share, belongs to RCA Records, representing a dip in share from last year’s 4.98% midyear mark but a rise in position, as it came in seventh at this point last year.
In sixth, Columbia’s current share has improved, up to 4.35% from 3.71% in Q1, as Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter and Hozier’s No. 1 single “Too Sweet” factors in, though it’s still down from the 5.16% it held midway through last year. (Columbia’s share includes some labels from indie distributor RED.) Capitol Music Group, meanwhile — which includes Virgin Music, Motown/Quality Control, Capitol Christian, Blue Note and Astralwerks in its share — has dropped into seventh place with a 4.03% current share, down from its 6.00% 2023 mark and the 4.71% it posted in the first quarter of 2024.
A trio of Sony labels round out the top 10, though in a different order than they did in the same period of 2023. In eighth, Epic Records has capitalized on a slew of big hip-hop albums in the first half of the year from 21 Savage, Future and Metro Boomin to boost its current share to 2.78%, up significantly from the 1.82% share it held last year when it sat in 10th. Also pushing higher is Sony Latin, which came in ninth at 2.17%, up from 1.99% last year. It comes in ahead of Sony Nashville, which dropped from a 2.55% share halfway through 2023 to a 1.96% share at the midpoint of 2024.
Another big climber at the year’s midway point is Alamo, which is up to 1.78% so far this year, good for 11th and a jump from the 0.96% current share it held this time last year. (Alamo also last year launched indie distributor Santa Anna, which inked a deal with Drake’s OVO Sound label in January.) Universal’s Nashville (1.35%) and Latin (1.12%) follow in 12th and 13th, respectively, while BMG (0.93%) and Concord (0.75%) — the latter of which scored a big hit with the Pulse Music-released “Million Dollar Baby” by Tommy Richman — round out the top 15 among current market share.
In overall market share — which combines current releases (within the past 18 months) with catalog — UMG increased its lead at the top, to 38.52% over last year’s 37.98%, while Sony (27.21%) and WMG (18.22%) both dipped slightly, and the indie community by distribution ownership inched upward, to 16.05% from last year’s 15.93%.
Among the individual labels, the race is much tighter at the top in overall share, with Republic’s 10.61% beating out Interscope’s 9.88%, though both saw their share increase year over year. (The score for the UMG umbrella groups in terms of overall share: ICLG at 15.78% and Republic Recording Company at 12.45%.) Below them, Atlantic jumps to third with a 7.61% mark, leapfrogging Warner Records’ 6.74%, while the deep catalogs of Capitol (in fifth) and Columbia (in sixth) allowed their shares rise to a virtual tie at 5.90%, with Capitol edging out Columbia by five ten-thousandths of a point. RCA (5.05%), Epic (2.75%), Sony Nashville (2.02%) and UMG Nashville (1.86%) round out the top 10.
By catalog share, both UMG (39.25%) and Sony (27.60%) grew year over year, while Warner (19.07%) and the indies (14.08% by distribution ownership) both dipped slightly. Among the individual labels, Interscope takes the top slot, coming in at 10.00% even, ahead of Republic’s 8.88%, with both up slightly over their prior-year marks. Republic barely rises above Atlantic, which drops to No. 3 with an 8.41% share, while Warner Records (6.88%), Capitol Music Group (6.53%) and Columbia Records (6.42%) are closely bunched together behind, with Warner jumping past Capitol year over year. RCA comes in a solid seventh with a 5.21% share, while Epic (2.75%), Def Jam Recordings (2.25%) and Sony Nashville (2.04%) complete the top 10.
Hanshin Contents Link Corporation, the master licensee of the Billboard brand in Japan, has signed a new partnership agreement with Luminate Data, the U.S.-based company which aggregates music data (streaming, digital and physical sales) from hundreds of sources and provides data reflecting trends in 49 different international markets. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and […]
Luminate, which provides data to the Billboard charts, has signed a new partnership that will enable it to report more direct U.S. independent music retail data than ever before, the company announced Wednesday (April 24).
Under the partnership — which took effect Friday (April 19) and was jointly reached by the Coalition of Independent Music Stores, Alliance of Independent Media Stores and Department of Record Stores (who work together as Record Store Day) along with the Music Business Association — Luminate will collect independent physical music sales from StreetPulse, a music industry data provider that receives daily sales metrics directly from retailers. The data, which encompasses sales of CDs, vinyl and cassettes, will be incorporated into the physical sales data Luminate already collects directly from other stores.
To better recognize the impact of music sales at indie retail, Billboard has rebranded its Tastemaker Albums chart to Indie Store Album Sales. The weekly tally reflects top-selling titles at indie stores in the United States.
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The news follows Luminate’s controversial decision last year to retire the weighted data modeling it previously used to measure physical sales in the indie retail sector in an effort to increase the quality and accuracy of its sales metrics.
“I’d like to thank the coalitions, the retail stores, and Luminate for taking this issue seriously and working together to reach a deal,” said Portia Sabin, president of the Music Business Association, in a statement.
“Sometimes it takes a pinch to bring people together, and the industry response to the unweighting of physical data was perhaps necessary to highlight the importance of that data to our industry,” Sabin added. “I’d also like to thank so many people at the labels, distributors, and even individual artists for speaking out and helping us to reach an agreement, because whenever our industry comes together to achieve a common goal it is inspiring for our future.”
“This new partnership is the most significant development in the independent music retail industry since the creation of Record Store Day,” said Andrea Paschal of the Coalition of Independent Music Stores. “Our goal has always been to ensure comprehensive physical sales reporting, and bringing in data from StreetPulse, which collects actual sales from more U.S. indie retailers than ever before, will ensure that every purchase is cataloged and counted correctly.”
“Luminate is always working towards the goal of providing quality and accurate data to the industry,” added Chris Muratore, director of partnerships at Luminate. “We always strive to be a good partner to those across the many sectors of the music and entertainment industries, and we are happy to announce this new partnership in alignment with that mission and our values.”
Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, who served as Record Store Day ambassador in 2019, said in his own statement, “We truly love …the [independent] shops. They’ve always meant the world to us. When it gets to this time when you can help out the community and the community record stores, it’s a no brainer.”
Upon hearing about the new agreement, Pearl Jam also put out a statement from the full band: “For nearly as long as we’ve been a band, there’d been a system that worked. We’re just honored to play a part… so that our beloved record stores can again have a real seat at the table.”
“Comprehensive sales figures are crucial for everyone: for artists and their label partners, for Luminate to provide accurate marketplace reporting, and for independent retailers who rightly own and control their data and the subsequent insights,” said Hannah Carlen, marketing director at Secretly Group. “Physical retail remains strong and growing, and this deal will ensure that reality is reflected in sales and total consumption figures.”
Note: Luminate is an independently operated company owned by PME TopCo, a PMC subsidiary and joint venture between Penske Media Corporation and Eldridge. Billboard is an independently operated company owned by PME Holdings, a subsidiary of PME TopCo.
2023 was a banner year for live events, with grosses from the top 100 tours up 53% from 2019, the last full year before the pandemic, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. But beyond these record-breaking earnings, concerts also affect artists’ recorded music consumption, spurring local boosts as they tour the country.
Luminate and Billboard collaborated to dig deeper into touring’s effect on streaming totals. Examining a sample of nearly 1,000 shows from 50 of 2023’s top-grossing acts, the analysis found that the median concert yielded a 42% increase in local on-demand audio streams during the week of each event as compared to the eight weeks prior.
Of course, the size of the bump varies by artist. There’s a spectrum of effects, from Odesza doubling its local consumption after an average concert (+143%) to Blake Shelton‘s bump coming in slightly below the overall median (+32%).
But one of the defining factors in how big of a local streaming bump an artist receives is genre. Fan bases across pop, rock, country and beyond boast their own demographic and geographic characteristics, and as a result, their consumption habits vary widely.
Some of the biggest boosts in local consumption are reserved for the dance/electronic acts included in this analysis. The genre’s live footprint is often tied to festivals or nightclubs, meaning few of its marquee acts tour in the traditional sense. When they do play ticketed headline shows, in many cases those concerts amount to mini residencies in particular pockets of the country.
Pretty Lights exemplifies this phenomenon. When the producer played three shows in two Colorado markets — plus three each in Atlanta and Philadelphia — last year, his local streams averaged a 132% bump. And shows played by LCD Soundsystem during the group’s 20-date residency at New York City’s Brooklyn Steel translated to a 125% jump in its New York-area streams, which sustained throughout the residency’s duration.
K-pop acts function in a similar way. In the United States, K-pop is a relatively young genre that has firmly established itself in only a handful of markets. SUGA and TOMORROW X TOGETHER each played a small number of American cities on tour in 2023, with both hitting New York and Los Angeles as well as cities like Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Similar to dance acts, SUGA and TOMORROW X TOGETHER enjoyed local weekly streaming gains of 133% and 129%, respectively — roughly three times higher than the average touring artist.
In stark contrast, R&B/hip-hop acts see comparatively small upticks in their local streaming activity after concerts. For much of the last decade, R&B/hip-hop has been the most popular genre in America, and its rise coincided with the dawn of the streaming era. For these artists, sky-high streaming activity tends to be a baseline, so adding a concert to the mix doesn’t yield the same growth rates.
Still, tours by Drake, 50 Cent and J.I.D. & SMINO generated local weekly boosts of 28%-34% — far less than K-pop or dance/electronic artists and below the 42% average, but a material increase across lengthy national tours nonetheless.
Local streaming increases for the country genre also tend to be slightly below average, with the size of the increases often dependent upon how long the acts have been around. Little Big Town and Blake Shelton, both of which began their careers in the early 2000s, post typical post-show gains of 36% and 32%, respectively. Jelly Roll and Morgan Wallen, both of whom scored the biggest hits of their careers last year, sit lower at 18%.
Jelly Roll and Wallen have led a new class of crossover country stars who have enjoyed more success on the Billboard Hot 100 and Streaming Songs charts than the genre has seen in years. Much of that success is owed to a more focused digital footprint, with robust activity across social media and streaming platforms compared to acts like Shelton and Little Big Town, who rose to fame in the CD era. That positions them closer to hip-hop acts who boast higher consumption figures on streaming platforms than older artists, therefore giving them less room to grow.
Of course, many artists cross genre lines or operate within sub-genres or different sects of genres, blurring its effects. The Jonas Brothers, a pop band that blossomed in the 2000s and reunited five years ago, typically see massive local streaming increases, with the group averaging a 129% boost following last year’s shows. RBD, a Latin pop vocal group with a similar timeline as the JoBros, demonstrated even bigger local streaming gains, which were up an average of 285% following dates on the band’s reunion tour last year. This pattern continues with tours by Backstreet Boys and New Kids on the Block (172%), suggesting that classic pop acts are perhaps the biggest benefactors in terms of streaming numbers when they go on tour.
Speaking of reunions, last year also marked the 20th anniversary of landmark records by Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service, both of which are the brainchildren of indie-rock stalwart Ben Gibbard. Both acts, fronted by Gibbard, returned to the stage in 2023 to co-headline the Give Up & Transatlanticism 20th Anniversary Tour. During that run, their local streams bloomed by 195% — a number outdone only by RBD among the 50 artists in the analysis.
Click here for more on the symbiotic relationship between touring and streaming.
At many of the more than 1,500 independent record stores in the United States, vinyl sales have been growing at a healthy clip for almost a decade — up 14.2% across all retailers in 2023 alone, according to Billboard’s data provider, Luminate. So why did Luminate track 47.3% fewer vinyl sales in January and February than it did for the same months in 2023?
On its face, such a precipitous drop might appear troubling — and puzzling — given the surge of vinyl sales since the pandemic. In actuality, the decline is mostly a result of Luminate changing the decades-old methodology it had used since Billboard adopted SoundScan’s measurement system in 1991 to count sales at indie retail outlets — a change that Luminate had warned last year would make 2024’s vinyl sales numbers appear significantly lower. But some of the drop reflects a protest by independent retailers against that adjustment, which one indie community executive worries “may put a damper on one of the industry’s high-profile, feel-good stories.”
Frustrated by the methodology change, some of these indie stores have stopped reporting sales to Luminate, and the Coalition of Independent Music Stores (CIMS), the Record Store Day board, the Music Business Association and other organizations have launched an alternative chart to measure physical and vinyl sales.
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“There are consequences to every decision,” Music Business Association president Portia Sabin said in a statement.
Until the end of last year, Luminate extrapolated indie retailers’ physical album sales using a methodology that weighted actual sales by a small sample of independent stores — approximately 70 accounts totaling 140 storefronts, Billboard estimates — that represented 1,500 to 2,000 retailers of their ilk that are operating in the United States, according to label and distribution sources.
Last year, physical purchases such as vinyl and CDs at these independent retailers — even with weighting — accounted for less than 3% of total music consumption units in the United States.
Indie retailers say they don’t oppose more accurate measurement of their sales. Rather, they are incensed that Luminate stopped weighting sales just months before it plans to begin the beta phase of its upgraded Connect measurement platform, which it had designed to only count actual indie physical sales. (The final version of the enhanced platform is expected to launch in 2025.) They had wanted Luminate to delay the methodology change until it onboarded hundreds more indie music retailers to report their sales.
Until the Connect beta is launched, Luminate is basing indie physical sales solely on the actual sales retailers report, which due to the protest has been cut in half to about 33 accounts with 70 storefronts, Billboard estimates.
Indie stores say they are protesting because of concerns that they — as well as the indie labels and artists who rely on them for marketing — will lose influence if their sales suddenly appear significantly lower across the board.
Indie-label executives and their distributors say they, too, are worried about the methodology change because it might affect the marketing of developing artists. “We are extremely disappointed that Luminate chose to stop weighting indie retail sales without launching a serious program to enlist store reporting and to count the physical market,” Matador Records president Patrick Amory wrote in an email. “Independent labels and independent artists over index in physical, and especially at indie retail, and we need a level playing field with the majors to measure success. Luminate is penalizing serious, career-building, album-oriented artists on the charts. Their sales are not being counted. Their market share is being allotted to the majors. That is a disaster for independent musicians, labels and retailers.”
An additional concern is that smaller sales numbers and less weight on the Billboard charts, which are based on Luminate data, will “diminish the importance of the physical market to the music business ecosystem,” as four independent record store coalitions and indie retailing giant Amoeba Music put it in a statement issued in October.
The worry is that less music will be released in physical formats, which would financially hurt indie retailers. But a record label executive says given the booming demand for vinyl — a high-margin product for labels — those fears are unwarranted. “Right now,” says one major-label executive, “with the high prices that the growing vinyl format commands, labels are printing dollars with healthy profit margin.”
Indie retailers, many of them iconic local businesses that have served their communities for decades, have panicked ahead of big changes in the past. When the major record companies decided to change the official day for new music releases from Tuesday in the U.S. to a worldwide Friday street date in 2014, “indie stores told labels, ‘You are killing us,’” recalls the major-label executive. “And yet no stores disappeared in the aftermath of that change.”
Some chart mavens say the boycott could be a risky move. By intentionally shrinking their influence on Billboard’s charts, indie stores could drive fans — who, thanks to social media, are much more attuned to the metrics that determine chart positions — to start shopping at sites or stores where they know their purchases will benefit their favorite artist.
Artists and record labels hoping to climb Billboard’s charts, meanwhile, might opt to stage meet-and-greets and other in-store promotions at businesses that report their data, though plenty of acts and record companies still host such events in stores that don’t report to Luminate.
In response to the protest, Luminate says it’s working to lure back stores that stopped reporting and onboard a critical mass of indie merchants that have not reported their data before. Stores that have stopped reporting are now permitted to bypass Luminate’s standard four-week onboarding process if they commit to reporting data for at least a year. For the latter, Luminate offers an instructional video and a written guide to the process, although indie merchants say they have pressed for personalized assistance and simplified reporting requirements.
Luminate also recently hired respected veteran music data executive Chris Muratore as its director for partnerships. Muratore worked for 18 years in various positions at Luminate’s previous iteration, Nielsen SoundScan, and more recently founded Border City Media, the startup behind music consumption data tool BuzzAngle Music (now Alpha Data, and, like Luminate, a subsidiary of Billboard’s parent company, Penske Media Corporation). He will focus on building and maintaining relationships with the independent music retail sector “to ensure physical music sale data collection is as accurate and representative as possible,” according to the release announcing his appointment.
When Billboard began tabulating charts using SoundScan data in May 1991, mass merchant sales, such as those by chain stores and, later, internet or other mail-order operations — were based on actual sales. But the data company used weighted samples of independent store sales because not all stores back then had the point-of-sale (POS) technology, nor the capability to transmit store reports. So, to compensate, stores were assigned weighting depending on how many other non-reporting stores were in their DMA, or designated market area. But over the years, that process became more difficult, and less scientific, as thousands of stores closed, sources say.
Using data from a confidential Luminate report shown to labels, Billboard estimates that last year, the data platform counted each album scanned by 140 indie retailers as 8.54 physical albums. Based on that extrapolation, Luminate reported that an average of close to 72,000 physical album copies — vinyl and CDs — sold each week, totaling 31.9 million copies sold in indie stores for the year.
Overall, in 2023, U.S. physical sales totaled nearly 87 million copies, of which 49.6 million was vinyl while 36.8 million was CDs. Of that total, indie stores, when they were still weighted, accounted for 36.7% of sales; non-traditional, which includes internet, mail order, Christian retailers and stores like Urban Outfitters, comprised 41.5% of physical sales; mass merchants like Target and Walmart, 16.5%; and chains like Barnes & Noble, 5%. As a result of the methodology change and boycott, Luminate reported a 40.2% drop in total physical sales (including vinyl and CDs at indie shops, chains and big-box stores) for the first eight weeks of 2024 compared with the same period in 2023 — from 13.6 million albums to 8.1 million. Within that, indie store sales fell 95.4%, from 5.71 million albums when weighted last year, to 262,000 copies.
Meanwhile, the aforementioned unweighted average weekly physical sales of nearly 72,000 averaged reported by indie retailers from January to November 2023 are now averaging 27,000 per week for the first eight weeks of 2024 because of the stores that have stopped reporting to Luminate.
As part of its plans to calculate actual sales instead of extrapolating them from a weighted sample, Luminate revealed in October that it had identified 570 indie accounts — with, industry sources say, the aid of labels, distributors and store coalitions — that it wanted to add as reporters. But as of Dec. 19, with the change in methodology looming, Luminate’s Music Connect website indicated that only six more indie sales reporters had been added, with the indie account total growing from 72 to 78. After the apparent boycott began, that fell to 36 reporters, and as of Feb. 22, to 33 indie store reporters.
Some of the retailers that have stopped reporting to Luminate are now sending their numbers to music data analysis platform StreetPulse, which is tabulating the Indie Retail Top 50 published by Hits Daily Double. Sources familiar with the chart say approximately 82 accounts operating about 185 indie stores are providing sales data, and another 50 stores are reporting online sales only.
Indie stores that have switched to StreetPulse claim it is more user-friendly because “Luminate expects the store reporters to do all the work to prepare the data for ingestion,” says one source familiar with the situation. “That takes time and [requires] a system able to make the reports. Luminate expects an indie store owner, who may be a one-man operation, to have the technical capabilities and manpower of a chain like Target.”
The source says the StreetPulse system “is cloud-based and has already integrated all the preeminent POS systems like Square for Retail Free, Shopify Clover and even some of the legacy systems like Lightspeed and Fieldstack, so it’s much easier to report.”
CIMS and ThinkIndie Distribution executive director Andrea Paschal says she supports the alternative chart because she felt her organization was “brushed aside” by Luminate.
As this conflict continues, it’s worth noting that vinyl sales keep growing. Even if indie store vinyl counts were eliminated for the first eight weeks of this year and last, Luminate’s Connect system indicates that year-to-date vinyl sales for the other nonweighted store sectors — chain, mass merchants, internet/mail order/venues and nontraditional retail — are still up nearly 7%. And the vinyl sales bonanza Record Store Day that was launched by independent record stores in 2007 is slated for April 20, less than six weeks away.
A version of this story originally appeared in the March 9, 2024, issue of Billboard.