There’s no denying the power of Drake.
According to market data obtained by Billboard, the OVO artist generated more U.S. on-demand streams in 2021 than all pre-1980 records combined. The report was based on data released by Luminate, the entertainment analytics company formerly known as MRC Data. Billboard reviewed the 988.154 billion U.S. streams from last year, and provided a decade-by-decade breakdown of how the catalog category has become increasingly dominate in recent years. And it’s thanks in large part to “older albums from new artists.”
The data shows that the catalog business, which consists of records 18 months or older, accounted for 69.8 percent of album consumption units in 2021, marking a 4.1 increase from 2020. However, Billboard reports that about 90 percent of those units were from records released in this century—highlighting the growing popularity in modern pop classics, also known as “shallow catalog.”
The Luminate data reveals that music released between 2000 to 2009 accounted for 11.12 percent of US streams in 2021; records from 2010 to 2019 made up 39.3 percent; while music from 2020-2021 made up 39.4 percent. Tunes that debuted during the nineties generated about 60 billion streams last (6.07 percent); while 1980s records saw 33.84 billion streams (3.42 percent).
Billboard points that all tracks from 1950 to 1979 accounted for only 0.6 percent of streams last year; while Drake, who released his first mixtape over 15 years ago, was responsible for about 0.8 percent of all 2021 streams.
Though the feat is impressive, it isn’t exactly surprising. In 2021, Drake became the first artist to ever earn more than 50 billion streams on Spotify. He was also crowned the most-streamed artist of 2021, as he represented 1 out of every 131 U.S. streams during that period.
