Streaming Continues to Blow Up in Canada. Here’s a Midyear Report on Canadian Music Consumption

BuzzAngle, a company that looks deep into the stats generated by the music industry, has come up with this midyear report for music consumption in Canada.

First, the good news:

• Audio streams reached 17.5 billion, up a whopping 83.4% over 2016 YTD.
• Subscription streams doubled, up 100.7%, and accounted for 75.6% of total audio streams in 2017 YTD, up from 69.2% in 2016 YTD.
• Overall music consumption for 2017 YTD was up 12.9% over 2016 YTD (22.8 million project units in 2017 YTD vs. 20.2 million album project units in 2016 YTD).
• Song Consumption for 2017 YTD was up 42.9% over 2016 YTD (149.0 million song project units in 2017 YTD vs. 104.2 million song project units in 2016 YTD).
• Vinyl album sales were up 4.8% over 2016 YTD while CD album sales were down 15.3%. Vinyl albums accounted for 3.4% of all physical album sales, up from 2.6% over 2016 YTD.
• Physical album sales accounted for 56.1% of all album sales 2017 YTD, up from 53.0% in 2016 YTD.

Now the bad news:

• Overall album sales were down 19.0% compared to 2016 YTD (7.9 million in 2017 YTD vs. 9.8 million in 2016 YTD).
• Digital album sales 2017 YTD were down 24.3% over the previous year (3.5 million in 2017 YTD vs. 4.6 million in 2016 YTD).
• Digital album sales accounted for 43.9% of all album sales 2017 YTD, down from 46.9% in 2016 YTD.
• Physical album sales were down 14.2% (4.5 million in 2017 YTD vs. 5.2 million in 2016 YTD).
• Song sales (downloads) in 2017 YTD were down 20.2% compared to 2016 YTD (32.5 million in 2017 YTD vs. 40.8 million in 2016 YTD).

Get the whole report here.