It’s no secret that making it big in music means making big bucks. While the artist’s management obviously has to boost sales, keep on top of budget tracking for concerts and tours, advertise the artist, etc., the biggest artists make millions of dollars a year. And now streaming has become the preferred method of listening to music in the booming technological era. Google Play, Pandora, Apple Music, Tidal and Spotify are arguably leading the shift from CD’s to digital music. With streaming overpowering pure sales, artists are able to climb the charts with singles and LP’s that strictly rely on digital success. According to Nielsen, Rap/Hip-Hop artists are the most popular amongst streaming consumers surpassing Rock as the largest genre when it comes to total consumption. As the masses collectively lean towards subscription services. It begs two essential questions: Has streaming delegitimized the music industry? and What is a successful album in a streaming world?

In 2017, U.S album sales experienced a remarkable decrease according to Nielsen’s year-end music report:

“…album sales, including both digital and physical, fell 17.7 percent last year to 169.15 million copies, down from 205.5 million in 2016. Meanwhile, streaming once again soared, leading the overall music industry to growth, largely due to the significant 58.7 percent increase in on-demand audio streams over last year.”

With pure album sales on the decline, the industry has adjusted to meet the needs of the general public. While many argue that streaming is delegitimizing the prestige of the music industry, including streaming figures provides an accurate representation of the present, digital world we currently live in. Everything from TV to audio formats has overthrown traditional structures that once reigned supreme.

Earlier this year Atlanta super group, Migos scored a #1 album on the Billboard 200 with Culture II debuting with an impressive 199,000 equivalent album units – mostly driven by streams. Within that sum, 38,000 were in traditional album sales. Despite the favorable success, the following represents a specific pattern. Pure album sales account for nearly a quarter of total sales, allowing streaming to come out as the victor. Recently, Cardi B’s Invasion of Privacy spent one week on top of the Billboard 200 with 255,000 equivalent album units (103,000 in traditional album sales). Despite landing the biggest streaming week ever for an album by a woman, traditional album sales have decreased immensely. This shift is a far cry from first week, platinum album sales achieved in the past by Usher (Confessions, 1,100,000), Eminem (The Marshall Mathers LP, 1,760,000) and Lil’ Wayne (The Carter III, 1,006,000) in the 2000’s.

Thanks to popular playlists like Rap Caviar on Spotify and The A-List: Hip-Hop on Apple Music, various artists are able to rack up millions of streams to secure a spot on the Billboard Hot 100/Hot 200 without having to sell a copious amount of physical copies. Due to the rising power of the playlist, artists are consistently breaking records by musicians who didn’t have the benefits of streaming. With streaming data accounting for over half of the overall album/single totals, reports of streaming manipulation have increased over the last few months, accusing prominent companies of skewing the overall numbers. In a recent report, Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv suggested that Tidal tampered with subscriber figures and streaming data in an effort to inflate Beyoncé and Kanye West’s latest albums.

Amongst the CCIS’s findings: “We have through advanced statistical analysis determined that there has in fact been a manipulation of the [TIDAL] data at particular times. The manipulation appears targeted towards a very specific set of track IDs, related to two distinct albums.”

Tidal’s lawyer responded to the claim’s stating:

“As each of these assumptions is demonstrably false, you and DN lied to NTNU to procure a study”.

Late last year, Billboard announced that they plan to discount the impact of YouTube and the ad-supported tier of Spotify when it comes to the Billboard Hot 100/Hot 200 in an effort to put more significance on streams from platforms that listeners actually pay for.

So what makes a successful album in a streaming world? To put it simply, quality will always override quantity. Far too many artists experience incredible first week numbers only to fall dramatically after the hype dies down. Albums as a whole are failing to remain relevant while hit singles on the LP overshadow the project as a whole. Artists are intentionally exceeding 13+ track albums in order to increase their chances to enter Billboard via. streaming with no regard for longevity. Kendrick Lamar remains one of the few musicians that has been able to solidify a presence on the Billboard 200 charts with his Pulitzer Prize winning album, DAMN. that was originally released over one year ago.

In spite of this, streaming isn’t going anywhere and is projected to become a $2 billion industry by 2019. As CD sales continue to plummet, streaming will dictate a new standard of what a successful album looks like. With 1,500 streams = 1 album sale, replay value is essential for an album to stand out from the crowd and to outlast the hype that many artists fall victim to.