Last year was a turning point in the way Americans listen to music. For the first time, more songs were streamed online than downloaded.
According to a year-end report from Nielsen Music, there were more than 251 million on-demand audio streams in 2016 — that's 38 percent of last year's total music consumption.
Streams are replacing digital sales a lot faster than digital sales replaced physical items like CDs when they were first introduced.
Hip-hop and R&B really pushed the trend, making up nearly a fourth of audio played but 28 percent of streams. Eight of the top 10 most streamed songs were hip-hop or R&B.
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