Rock Fans Have To Stream

I'm looking at the half year BuzzAngle report where the rock format is #1 in both Album Sales, with 14.3%, and also #1 in Physical and Vinyl, and #2 in Digital Alum Sales and #1 in Song Sales, but when it comes to Audio Streams...it's dwarfed by Hip-Hop/Rap, which has 24.4% to rock's 6.9%. Even COUNTRY has a greater percentage of Audio Streams, with 7.2%, and that's the land of Luddites, the last people to buy CDs, the last people to be influenced by terrestrial radio...not that I want to give country too much crap, because it almost equals Rock's sales numbers, with 13.4% of Album Sales, 16.2% of Physical Sales, so if you're a rock fan looking for all the people, I'd check out the Nashville sound.

Not that the numbers aren't complicated. There also are Indie Rock, Metal and Punk categories, and if you add them into Rock, which they probably should be, of course the numbers go up. But then you'd have to add Pop into Hip-Hop Rap, and then it would be game over. Pop dominates Song Sales, with 19.3%, and dwarfs Rock with 12.8% of Audio Streams, and Metal is positively anemic when it comes to streams and...

I'll stop boring you with the numbers. I'll just say it's a youth business, and it appears rock fans are old, the last to give up physical formats, the big vinyl collectors, they get a disproportionate amount of press, but if you want to know what's really going on...

You look at on demand streams, which BuzzAngle reports, both Audio and Video.

Forget those inane charts in the newspaper, they're complete hogwash, blending sales and streams in a formula so bizarre that it makes no sense. An album can go to number one based on the streaming of one song. And you supposedly get bragging rights by entering the chart high, but then you fall off and are forgotten.

So who do we blame? The artists or the audience or...

The NBA lives on Twitter, while the baseball fans abhor the service and the NFL is run like high school, controlling the behavior of athletes.

It's a new world. If you're talking about the sound quality of CDs, owning physical objects, you no longer matter, you're old and out of touch, cry all you want, it makes no difference.

But if you want to make a difference, you've got to tell everybody you know to start streaming, to prop up the rock format before hip-hop runs away with the game. Because catching up is hard. Somehow all the youngsters found streaming, are signed up for Spotify, while the oldsters still debate the efficacy and the payouts. Meanwhile, Drake has nearly two billion Audio Streams, 1,786,913,816 to be exact, and the only rock act in the top 25, which is really pop, is Twenty One Pilots, which is #23 with only 501,885,392. But talk to either of these acts, they're not bitching about streaming payouts, no way.

And, of course, Ed Sheeran is #4. Which shows you what melodies and songs you can sing along with produce.

It's not rocket science folks.


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