Hip-hop and rap continue to dominate streaming–in the US, anyway

Now that we’re into 2019, we’re starting to get more numbers about what happened in music for the last twelve months. First up: The American music market, courtesy of an analysis by BuzzAngle.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, hip-hop and rap were the most-streamed genres of the year when all streams are measured. They accounted for 25.4% of all steams, up from 22% in 2018.

If we look just at on-demand audio (i.e. Spotify, Apple Music, etc. and not video sites like YouTube), hip-hop/rap’s share is 26.9%.

Here’s a deeper dive into what Americans streamed (again, via BuzzAngle). Note that rock is in third place overall. But if R&B is included with hip-hop/rap, the overall share of that music is formidable. No wonder labels are putting their promotional and marketing dollars into those genres.