It’s a watershed moment as the black-dominate genre becomes the most consumed music style in the country
If seems more ubiquitous nowadays, there’s now empirical data to back that up. For the first time in Nielsen Music history, R&B/hip-hop has become the most consumed music genre in the United States. In Nielsen’s latest mid-year music report, hip-hop/R&B had the largest share of overall consumption, capturing 25.1 percent of the total volume in album sales and online streaming. It’s a watershed moment for the black-dominated genre. Former longtime volume leader rock — a genre created by African Americans then co-opted by white artists — dropped to second with 23 percent of the total volume. While rock continues to physical album sales, possessing over 40 percent share of the industry’s albums, R&B/hip-hop owned the lion’s share of streaming consumption. Streaming has proved a boon for hip-hop, as the music industry as a whole migrates to online services such as Spotify and Tidal. Note that while this migration may have improved visibility and availability for some artists, streaming perhaps undercuts artist revenues due to lowered album sales. The 2017 Grammy Awards that it would permit streaming-only albums to be considered for nominations.
