Luminate has released its year-end metrics for 2023, reflecting audio listening growth in Canada and the U.S. over the past year.
Total on-demand song streams were up 33.7% globally, with on-demand song streaming in Canada up 18.3% from 2022 to 145.1 billion and on-demand audio streaming up 15.3% to 130.2 billion. That growth is pacing slightly higher than in the U.S. where song streaming increased by 14.6% to 1.5 trillion and on-demand audio streaming by 12.7% to 1.2 trillion.
Total album consumption in Canada was up 15% year-over-year, while total album sales – both physical and digital – dropped 1.9%. Canadian artists increased their share of total album consumption by 9.1% with total consumption of the Canadian album catalogue also up by 17.4%.
Ranked by overall streaming volume, Canada comes in ninth with total streams of 145.3 billion, behind the U.S. (which ranked #1 at 1.45T), India, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Germany, Japan, and the UK.
Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” secured the most on-demand audio streams in Canada in 2023, with his albums “One Thing At A Time” and “Dangerous: The Double Album” placing #1 and #4 on the Total Album Sales chart.
Miley Cyrus topped the On-Demand Audio + Video chart in Canada with “Flowers,” followed by Rema and Selena Gomez collaboration “Calm Down.” Wallen’s “Last Night” came in third.
The Luminate report says the fastest growing genres in the U.S. are World, which saw 5.7B more stream downloads in 2023, followed by Latin and Country. Comedy, New Age, and Children’s all experienced a dip in popularity.
The report indicates a new Country consumer is powering growth of the genre. While the average country fan still listens to AM/FM radio, Gen Zs and Millenials are driving streaming growth for artists like Luke Combs and Zach Bryan, now comprising those artists biggest fan bases. That translates to music discovery with 48% of Gen Z country listeners more likely to discover new music through video or audio streaming services and 64% more likely to listen to playlists shared by family and friends.
Alt Rock was the sub-genre that experienced the most growth in the U.S. in 2023 with 15.9B on-demand audio streams.
Luminate also makes the link between soundtracks and music discovery and streaming documentaries and consumption, noting the more than 20% global lift in on-demand audio streaming Wham and George Michael experienced following the release of Netflix doc Wham! Taylor Swift, Talking Heads and Beyonce also made huge streaming gains following their respective film releases in theatres, led by Swift whose Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour resulted in a global on-demand streaming boost of more than 42% and nearly 53% in the U.S. alone.
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