Rock Still Leads In Music Consumption

While it seems like a country and pop world when you listen to the radio, it's a completely different planet when it comes to total music consumption across all delivery platforms, according to a study by Nielsen Music. The study selected the top musical genres looking at albums, track equivalent albums (downloads) and streaming equivalent albums. This is what was found:

1. Rock - 29%
2. R&B/ Hip Hop - 17.2%
3. Pop - 14.9%
4. Country - 11.2%
5. Dance/EDM - 3.4%
6. Christian/Gospel - 3.1%
7. Holiday/Seasonal - 2.6%
8. Latin - 2.6%
9. Jazz - 1.4%
10. Classical - 1.4%
11. Children - 1%

When it comes to actual album sales, Rock had a commanding lead over the next closest genre with 33.2% over R&B/Hip Hop's 13.9%.

This goes to show that consumers of the Rock genre are used to buying albums and are still most comfortable consuming their music that way. That said, Rock consumers have embraced streaming as well at 24.7%, just behind R&B/Hip Hop's 28.5% and ahead of Pop at 21.1%.

While Rock may not have any artists in the top 10 of almost any overall sales chart, as a whole, the genre is still vibrant. In fact, since it no longer relies on a few huge sellers to prop up the numbers, it might actually be healthier than many of the other seemingly more popular genres.