Why Were People Not Buying Albums in 2016?

[CaulkDestroyer]

Since the new millenium, 2016's most purchased album was Beyonce Knowles' "Lemonade" with 2.5 million units sold, but compared to all years from 2001-2019, that was the lowest selling. Why do you think people weren't inclined to buy albums that year? Just the year before, Adele sold almost SEVEN times that of Beyonce Knowles with 17.4 million copies of her album "25"? Do you think it was economical, political, or artists of low interest released that year...ect? 

 

[Stefani]

They were saving their coins for Ed Sheeran's album. 

[RadicalOptimism]

What I wanna know is why everyone was so foamy at the mouth for Adele? She’s nothing extraordinary to be selling like it’s the 90s. 

[AmorProhibido]

16 minutes ago, CrazyButItFeelsAllright said:

What I wanna know is why everyone was so foamy at the mouth for Adele? She’s nothing extraordinary to be selling like it’s the 90s. 

Agreed. Not saying I hate her because she has a few songs I like but I find her to be very boring and mediocre. Everyone and their mother rides her d.ick and I'm just like chile 

[RadicalOptimism]

10 minutes ago, AmorProhibido said:

Agreed. Not saying I hate her because she has a few songs I like but I find her to be very boring and mediocre. Everyone and their mother rides her d.ick and I'm just like chile 

I like Hello, Rumour Has It, Set Fire to the Rain & Make You Feel My Love but she’s not a revolutionary figure whose made iconic contributions to pop culture besides having a good voice. I don’t hate her either, but yeah I just don’t get the adoration 

[SloppyToppyGoddess]

55 minutes ago, CrazyButItFeelsAllright said:

What I wanna know is why everyone was so foamy at the mouth for Adele? She’s nothing extraordinary to be selling like it’s the 90s. 

I think maybe the youth loves their current pop girls to sing and do choreo, but there is an older generation that just likes vocalists, plus the emotional songs that Adele brought to those who were sad. So there is a big audience for what she does. I do think 17.5 compared to 2million is crazy...so idk 

[Midnight]

I purchased both albums and remember Adele's album being like $10 versus Beyonce's which was around $22.

Lemonade was not easily accessible to listen to, you had to join tidal so that played a huge role on the albums outreach. If it had been on the other platforms the album would have had more exposure and way more sales for sure. 

I also bought Glory that year 

 

[Blackout2006]

This is why the Beyhive stans never bring up the fact of Lemonade being "the best selling album of 2016" because if it werent for the US, Lemonade would be below top 10  Those #1 sales were tragic, but I guess it was a very weird year.

Still the best year of my whole existence

[PokemonSpears]

2 hours ago, CrazyButItFeelsAllright said:

What I wanna know is why everyone was so foamy at the mouth for Adele? She’s nothing extraordinary to be selling like it’s the 90s. 

I think it's just that Hello became viral, plus it was the "comeback" plus she's what the general public considers a great artist.

I don't know what other singles she released or how well they did, but I heard the album once and never cared to listen to it again, 'cause I was bored af

 

I still like her and I'm waiting for her to drop a club banger or something different lol

[PokemonSpears]

and to the OP, this is an article by Forbes:

 

Nielsen recently released its Year-End Music Report for 2016 and it details a pattern of music consumption in the United States that has never been seen before. Album sales in every format save one are down from 2015. Downloads of digital songs are down. And yet, overall music consumption was up 3%. The reason? On-demand streaming took over the music business. The only real surprise is that it took this long.

With a slice that gobbled up 38% of the pie, on-demand audio streaming accounted for the largest share of total audio music consumption. It was the first time that on-demand audio steaming surpassed digital music sales. Total music streams (audio and video) were up 39.2% year-over-year. Most of that gain came from audio streams which increased a whopping 76.4% from 2015 to 2016. Video streams increased 7.5%.

In contrast, sales of albums and songs tanked in 2016. Digital song downloads were down 25% from 2015. Total album sales (CD, cassette, vinyl and digital) were off by 16.7%. Digital album sales dropped 20.1% while CD sales fell 16.3%. Mass market (down 24.5%) and chain stores (down 21.4%) took the biggest losses in terms of physical album sales.

 

On-demand streaming was the star of the music consumption show in 2016. Nielsen measured on-demand music streaming by combining audio and video streams from Spotify, Youtube, Apple, Google Play, Amazon, Rhapsody Song, Tidal, Soundcloud, Xbox Music, Slacker, Tidal Video, Medianet, Aol Radio and Disciple.

The music industry continued to make money in 2016 because the loss in sales was offset by income from subscription streaming services. BuzzAngle reports that on-demand streams from paid subscriptions increased 124% from 85.3 billion in 2015 to 191.4 billion in 2016. Ad-supported on-demand streams increased 14.3%. Streams from subscription accounts made up approximately 76% of on-demand audio streams.

 

tl;dr: basically this is the year streaming took over sales

 

[SumoCyco2017]

Cuz albums in 2016 sucked?

[Alestaos]

6 hours ago, CrazyButItFeelsAllright said:

I like Hello, Rumour Has It, Set Fire to the Rain & Make You Feel My Love but she’s not a revolutionary figure whose made iconic contributions to pop culture besides having a good voice. I don’t hate her either, but yeah I just don’t get the adoration 

All I Ask is a fantastic song from Adele!

[BabyBabyBay]

I think it was simply a case of the streaming "format" being at its peak in 2016. I think the way people consumed things via the internet was at an all time high back then.

Then the vinyl and cassette revival started to come back in.

"Cyclical trends, tryna fit in" - Lemonade girl in 2013

[AmorProhibido]

11 hours ago, CrazyButItFeelsAllright said:

I like Hello, Rumour Has It, Set Fire to the Rain & Make You Feel My Love but she’s not a revolutionary figure whose made iconic contributions to pop culture besides having a good voice. I don’t hate her either, but yeah I just don’t get the adoration 

Yeah I like Rumor Has It, Set Fire To The Rain, Rolling In The Deep, Someone Like You, and Skyfall, but it's like you said, there's nothing game changing about her. Her music is very inoffensive and risk free so that's probably a major reason why her target demographic is just about everyone.

[girl_bye]

idk i was busy that year!!!!

[bas che]

Since that’s when streaming became mainstream, there was less reason for people to buy the whole album when they can just stream a couple of tracks from it. 

[ColdAsFire88]

On 1/14/2021 at 12:12 AM, PokemonSpears said:

and to the OP, this is an article by Forbes:

 

Nielsen recently released its Year-End Music Report for 2016 and it details a pattern of music consumption in the United States that has never been seen before. Album sales in every format save one are down from 2015. Downloads of digital songs are down. And yet, overall music consumption was up 3%. The reason? On-demand streaming took over the music business. The only real surprise is that it took this long.

With a slice that gobbled up 38% of the pie, on-demand audio streaming accounted for the largest share of total audio music consumption. It was the first time that on-demand audio steaming surpassed digital music sales. Total music streams (audio and video) were up 39.2% year-over-year. Most of that gain came from audio streams which increased a whopping 76.4% from 2015 to 2016. Video streams increased 7.5%.

In contrast, sales of albums and songs tanked in 2016. Digital song downloads were down 25% from 2015. Total album sales (CD, cassette, vinyl and digital) were off by 16.7%. Digital album sales dropped 20.1% while CD sales fell 16.3%. Mass market (down 24.5%) and chain stores (down 21.4%) took the biggest losses in terms of physical album sales.

 

On-demand streaming was the star of the music consumption show in 2016. Nielsen measured on-demand music streaming by combining audio and video streams from Spotify, Youtube, Apple, Google Play, Amazon, Rhapsody Song, Tidal, Soundcloud, Xbox Music, Slacker, Tidal Video, Medianet, Aol Radio and Disciple.

The music industry continued to make money in 2016 because the loss in sales was offset by income from subscription streaming services. BuzzAngle reports that on-demand streams from paid subscriptions increased 124% from 85.3 billion in 2015 to 191.4 billion in 2016. Ad-supported on-demand streams increased 14.3%. Streams from subscription accounts made up approximately 76% of on-demand audio streams.

 

tl;dr: basically this is the year streaming took over sales

 

I was going to say the exact same thing. Spotify and Apple Music were pushing for memberships. I used to purchase albums in iTunes and Glory happens to be one of the last albums I bought  and I’ve been streaming ever since

[PokemonSpears]

3 hours ago, ColdAsFire88 said:

I was going to say the exact same thing. Spotify and Apple Music were pushing for memberships. I used to purchase albums in iTunes and Glory happens to be one of the last albums I bought  and I’ve been streaming ever since

yeah, the question would be why did sales increase in later years. The logical trend would've been to keep going down and down every year.