According to a study released by Nielson Music, rock music was twice as popular in 2014 as pop music, accounting for 29% of the industry's music consumption across album, track purchases, and music streaming. Rock music dominated album sales claiming 33% of sales the the next closest genre, R&B, totaling 14% suggesting album sales, to the rock music consumer, is still preferable. Rock held its own, but fell short to R&B 25% to 29% respectively in total streams by genre.
Pop claimed a surprisingly low amount of the industry's consumption, totaling 15% for 2014. R&B/hip-hop claimed 17%, country music represented 10%, and EDM accounted for 3%. 24% of the industry's consumption was attributed to a combination of other genres.
The breakdown of top musical genres is as follows:
- Rock – 29%
- R&B/ Hip Hop – 17.2%
- Pop – 14.9%
- Country – 11.2%
- Dance/EDM – 3.4%
- Christian/Gospel – 3.1%
- Holiday/Seasonal – 2.6%
- Latin – 2.6%
- Jazz – 1.4%
- Classical – 1.4%
- Children – 1%
Music Business Worldwide reports, "These percentages were calculated by dividing total track downloads into TEA (track equivalent albums) and total streams into SEA (streaming equivalent albums)* and then adding the results to the album sales tally.Using this formula, overall annual music consumption was down year-on-year in the US by 2% to 476.5m ‘albums’ in 2014, according to Nielsen."
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