For many years, rock music has been at the forefront of sales charts, featuring groups like the Beatles, AC/DC, the Eagles, the Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, and Led Zeppelin being among the highest-selling performers in music history. Despite rock music still ranking as the second-largest genre in the U.S., it significantly trails behind the leading genre of R&B/hip-hop and the third-place pop genre in streaming figures.
In the year leading up to Jan. 2, 2025, R&B/hip-hop topped the U.S. music market with 27.2% of audio consumption units, surpassing rock by a mere 1.7%, which accounted for 25.5%, as per Luminate’s data. (These statistics exclude activity from genres that are not categorized.) However, for the latest market share — categorized by Luminate as new releases from the past 18 months — rock music’s share declines to 11.9%, significantly lower than the 25.5% figure that includes catalog music as well.
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This could clarify the challenges faced by rock’s leading artists in the streaming age. For a long time, the music industry defined success by millions sold: an album or track achieving 1 million copies would mean a platinum record; a diamond record represents 10 million units, indicating major success. Although these benchmarks are still relevant for albums, the streaming revolution has shifted success metrics to hundreds of millions — and increasingly into the billions for top-tier successes.
Consequently, hitting 1 billion annual on-demand U.S. streams serves as a dependable measure of success for the top artists in the nation, with the threshold of 2 billion streams appearing to indicate superstar status. However, this landscape heavily favors genres like R&B/hip-hop and pop, which have flourished in the streaming realm. In 2024, streaming represented 91.2% of total U.S. album consumption units, compared to 8.8% from sales; while rock leads in market share for physical sales formats at 35.8%, it falls significantly behind R&B/hip-hop in streaming, trailing by a substantial 10 percentage points (19.69% compared to 29.78%).
Last year, 51 artist catalogs exceeded the 2 billion stream threshold in the U.S., excluding any collaborative works, according to Luminate. Among those artists, Linkin Park was the sole core rock representative to reach this benchmark at 2.25 billion. In contrast, four country musicians — Morgan Wallen, Zach Bryan, Luke Combs, and Chris Stapleton — also achieved that feat, alongside three Latin artists, Bad Bunny, Peso Pluma, and Fuerza Regida. An additional 11 artists that exceeded 2 billion streams could be categorized as pop, including Taylor Swift (16.5 billion on-demand streams); Billie Eilish (5.16 billion); and Noah Kahan (3.2 billion). This indicates that the overwhelming majority of artists surpassing 2 billion streams in 2024 — precisely 32 — belong to the R&B/hip-hop genre, led by Drake, who holds the second-highest streaming count in the U.S. at 10.1 billion streams in 2024, down from 11.5 billion the previous year. (The equivalent album units and streaming statistics mentioned in this article incorporate user-generated content (UGC) on-demand streams, which are not included in any Billboard chart rankings.)
Therefore, while it might be tempting to assume that legendary rock bands such as Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Elton John, the Beatles, the Eagles, Metallica, Bruce Springsteen, and the Rolling Stones rank among the top artists in the U.S, R&B/hip-hop’s leading figures overpower the renowned rock artists when it comes to streaming numbers.
For instance, not only did none of the aforementioned recording artists reach the 2 billion streams mark in 2024, but they haven’t achieved that milestone in the last five years either. In comparison, reaching the 2 billion stream milestone is relatively common for R&B/hip-hop artists — indeed, numerous R&B/hip-hop and pop performers consistently exceed even 3 billion on-demand streams each year.
Billboard assessed over 90 of the top U.S. acts and compiled an average of each artist’s annual stream count over the five-year span from 2020-2024, with Taylor Swift (10.74 billion average annual streams) and Drake (9.2 billion annually) leading the rankings. Many R&B/hip-hop artists examined displayed remarkably high averages. For the 2020-2024 period, these artists include NBA YoungBoy, whose five-year annual average for U.S. on-demand streams is 6.2 billion; Juice WRLD (4.8 billion); The Weeknd (4.6 billion); Kanye West (4.043 billion); Eminem (4.037 billion); Future (3.7 billion); Kendrick Lamar (3.3 billion); J. Cole (3.15 billion); and Travis Scott (2.79 billion), according to Billboard calculations based on Luminate data.
For rock artists, the narrative is vastly different; only within the last few years have some prominent rock acts reached the latter milestone.
Nonetheless, from the approximately 45 notable rock artists that Billboard explored for this article, eight have reached the 1 billion mark consistently over the past five years, and one group — Imagine Dragons — has crossed the 2 billion line twice (2.3 billion in 2022 and 2.47 billion in 2023), positioning it as the only rock band to average over 2 billion during that timeframe (2.04 billion).
Among the remaining bands achieving over 1 billion streams each of the past five years, one of them is the acclaimed Beatles, who, with an average of 1.91 billion, represent the only other rock act to come close to 2 billion annual streams. Other rock bands consistently reaching this milestone are Queen (1.38 billion average annual streams); AC/DC (1.2 billion average annually); Linkin Park (1.5 billion average, achieving over 2 billion in 2024); Maroon 5 (1.73 billion); Coldplay (1.6 billion); and Twenty One Pilots (1.24 billion).
Four other rock acts averaged over 1 billion streams annually during the period, but managed to achieve that mark only four times: Metallica (1.26 billion); the Red Hot Chili Peppers (1.15 billion); Panic! At the Disco (1.1 billion); and the Eagles (close to 1.1 billion). Elton John (1.02 billion average) reached the threshold in three of the five years studied, as did Elvis, whose average was just under 935 million.
The Rolling Stones (958 million annual average) and Creedence Clearwater Revival (955 million) each surpassed 1 billion streams on two occasions in the last five years, while Green Day, Billy Joel, and Radiohead achieved this once.
This leaves several significant names that have not yet reached the 1 billion milestone. From the bands Billboard reviewed, this includes Led Zeppelin, averaging nearly 931 million streams annually over the last five years, and Pink Floyd, with an annual average of 844 million streams. Guns ‘N Roses, Aerosmith, Van Halen, The Beach Boys, and the Killers all had averages ranging from 500 million to 800 million streams annually throughout the analyzed period, while David Bowie, the Police, Grateful Dead, and Creed ranged from 300 million to 500 million annually.
Nonetheless, reaching 300 million streams is still a significant achievement. In today’s market, that could generate approximately $1.6 million in master recording revenues alone, as estimated by Billboard.
- Source: NEWHD MEDIA
