If you've been a member of the rock and metal community for a while, you probably know that we tend to pay attention to artists and music that have been around longer than to new things. Now, while this fact is often used as an argument by doomsday prophets who claim that rock is dead and/or dying, it turns out that the music industry in general isn't much different.
A recent analysis published by Music Business Worldwide found that catalog music comprised 73.1% of total album consumption in the second half of 2021 in the US.
This surprising conclusion was drawn from the latest US market report published by MRC Data on January 6th. According to the source, there were 335 million catalog records and “only” 123.4 million “current” records sold throughout the second half of 2021.
However, there are some important caveats here: the MRC treats “catalog records” as any albums older than 18 months. Furthermore, the source data does not differentiate between streaming and albums purchased in other formats, with final numbers representing the total of both.
Although the second half of 2021 saw a significant increase in catalog sales figures, the situation is not much different when we consider the sales figures for the entire previous year.
According to the MRC, catalog records constituted 69.8% of total album consumption throughout 2021, compared to 65.1% in 2020. Below, you can see the annual figures represented in a graph created by the MRC (via MBW):
Note: MRC has since issued a correction to its initial report, with the total number of catalog album consumption being 623.6M in 2021 and 522.6M in 2020, respectively, and the current album consumption standing at 269.5M in 2021 and 279.9M in 2020, respectively. Below, you can see the old chart (left) compared to the updated chart with the corrected data (right) (via MBW). You can check the corrected data here.
This result is even more surprising given that a significant number of long-awaited hit albums were released in 2021. Adele 's 30 , Drake 's Certified Lover Boy , and Ed Sheeran 's = were all released last year. As for rock and metal, in the middle of 2021, the releases of Mastodon 's Hushed and Grim , Gojira 's Fortitude , Trivium 's In The Court of The Dragon , and Iron Maiden 's Senjutsu were some of the most well-received albums in recent times.
MBW has an interesting hypothesis that the numbers reported by MRC can be explained by the fact that the source does not differentiate between streaming and purchasing albums through other means, coupled with the idea that more and more older listeners are discovering the advantages of streaming music during the Covid-19 era.
According to MRC, 89% of music listeners aged 56–74 tuned into streaming during 2021 in the US, while the total number of albums streamed in the US increased 9.9% compared to 2020, to a total of 1.13 trillion. Below, you can see the MRC chart representing the popularity of streaming across active generations in various countries (via MBW):
Whatever the reason for these surprising findings, it appears that streaming platforms are just as beneficial to older music as they are to new releases, and that catalog albums offer very stiff competition to new material across the music market.