Audio Streaming's Stunning Resurgence

Across the United States, people consumed 4.9 percent more music in 2016 than they did in 2015, according to a report from BuzzAngle. The growth was driven by an explosion in subscription streaming services that saw a whopping 124 percent increase. On-demand music streaming has been growing at a phenomenal pace in recent years while nearly all categories of music sales have taken a hit.

The stunning resurgence of audio streaming can be seen clearly in the following infographic. In 2015, there were more on-demand video streams than audio streams. However, in 2016, the number of on-demand audio streams went up 82.6 percent, reaching 250 billion streams in total. That's far more than on-demand video which grew 7.5 percent to reach 181 billion streams.