Putting Things in Perspective: 10 Stupefying Streaming Facts

As various platforms compete for dominance and new players enter the game (looking at you Tidal), let's state the obvious: streaming is here, and here to stay.

Streaming music is easy, fast, and convenient. While it might be becoming increasingly popular, the specific numbers related to streaming's ever-growing popularity might be a little bit surprising. To keep you in the loop, here are 10 facts and figures that will put music streaming in perspective and blow your mind just a little bit.

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2. Americans streamed 164 billion tracks in 2014.

In 2014, Americans streamed more than 164 billion tracks across audio and video platforms. That's more than 23 times the number of people that reside on planet Earth (approximately 7.125 billion).

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4. Bands have started trying to hack streaming services.

The members of the band Vulfpeck didn't have the cash to be able to go on tour, so they devised a genius plan. Release an album on Spotify of pure silence, have their fans stream the songs at night, get their cash payout (.007 cents of a dollar per stream), then get to go on tour. Genius.

Unfortunately, Spotify caught on, and though they tolerated the album at first, Spotify removed Vulfpeck's silent Sleepify album after it started piling up streams—Vulfpeck's fans were listening. The band was on track to make $20,000, but instead...

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6. There have been more than 1.5 billion playlists made on Spotify, more than the entire population of China.

Over 1.5 billion playlists have been made on Spotify, just barely outstripping the Chinese population of 1.357 billion people.

Spotify is not, however, seeing the same kind of growth in China as it has elsewhere. The 355 million users who stream music still prefer to get it for free. China Music Business explains the reasoning behind the resistance:

In China, the conversation surrounding value in music is still at a conceptual, rather than a practical level: The consumer is vehemently defensive over free access to digital music, copyright law is still in its infancy, music platforms are only just emerging from the dark ages of 100% copyright infringement. In short, money is a fairly new arrival to the online music landscape, let alone the pay-through of money in itemised royalty reports.

7. 2014's most streamed artist? Ed Sheeran.

2014's most streamed artist was Ed Sheeran. The British crooner racked up more than 860 million plays on his catalog. Looks like there are a lot of people playing his latest album X on repeat.

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9. The number of people paying for streaming services is catching up to the number of those paying for cable TV.

10. Taylor Swift has more Spotify followers than the entire population of Chicago.

As of April 27, there are close to 3 million people subscribed to Taylor Swift's artist page on Spotify (2, 987,489 to be exact). That's 268,707 more people than Chicago's entire population of 2,718,782. Now let's compare those numbers to the number of Taylor Swift albums on Spotify: 0

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12. Napster still exists.

13. Streaming has affected both digital sales AND piracy.

Streaming has clearly become the means du jour for music fans. So much so that it made a significant dent in digital music sales last year: digital dipped 9% while streaming took a 53% upswing. But, perhaps more surprisingly, streaming has had a devastating effect on piracy: 80% of Norwegians under 30 admitted to pirating music in 2009. Last year, that number had shrunk to a measly 4%. Hard times for pirate music.

[caption id="attachment_521449" align="aligncenter" width="600"]Image via NBC Image via NBC[/caption]

14. 2014's most streamed track on Spotify was Pharrell's "Happy" with 260 million plays.

"Happy" killed 2014, invading grocery stores and clubs alike with its cheerful, upbeat tempo. And from all those plays, Pharrell (and the team who wrote and produced the song with him) will rake in around 1.8 million dollars. Earlier this year Spotify announced that artists receive .007 of a dollar for every song streamed. That's a lot of dough coming from just one song.

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16. Nickelback's most played song on Spotify has over 52 million plays.

We'll never know who is out there listening to Nickelback. Maybe (probably) it's all from one crazed fan playing on repeat. We'll never know. But we can't ignore the numbers: Nickelback has 1,163,282 Spotify followers.

"How You Remind Me" also has over 100 million plays on YouTube, so as much as we hate on Nickleback we can't deny their success.

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