Music consumption in the U.S. in 2021, by genre & format

Physical albums accounted for less than ten percent of music consumption in the United States in 2021. While fans of jazz or rock music were most likely to listen to artists via physical formats, the vast majority of listeners across all genres enjoyed their favorite tracks through on-demand streaming services.

Stream it, just stream it

A closer look at the distribution of streamed music consumption reveals that R&B and hip-hop is the most streamed music genre in the United States. Roughly 30 percent of all streams came from this genre in 2021, which can at least partially be explained by its popularity among young and digitally savvy listeners. The overall demand for streamed audio content is growing rapidly each year, and in 2021, the number of paid music streaming subscribers in the U.S. surpassed a record 82 million. That same year, nearly one trillion music streams were amassed in the United States alone, signaling a bright future for services like Spotify or Amazon Music. So which artists were audiences listening to?

Most popular songs

In 2021, "Levitating" by Dua Lipa was the most popular song in the U.S. based on audio streams. The track from her second studio album "Future Nostalgia" was streamed a total of 804 million times while also ranking among the top three best-selling digital music singles worldwide. Looking at the artists with the most streams overall that year, Olivia Rodrigo topped the charts with a combined 1.47 billion streams for her songs "drivers license" and "good 4 u".