By FYI Staff
Nielsen has released its 2018 mid-year music report that confirms streaming volumes are accelerating.
Total on-demand audio streams reached a six-month record of 26 .8 billion, up 53%, and total on-demand video stream volume increased 32% year-over-year.
Weekly on-demand audio streams clipped the one billion mark for the first time in March, and on-demand audio song streams peaked for the first time at 1.2 billion during the week ending June 28.
The report’s authors offer that “this 53% year-over-year increase in on-demand audio streaming volume has helped alleviate a 17% decrease in album sales and 22% decrease in digital track sales.”
Overall album audio consumption (albums + track equivalent albums (TEA) + on-demand audio streaming equivalent albums (SEA) increased 18% to 27 million units, up from 23 million during the same period in 2017.
Drake singles “God’s Plan” and “Nice For What,” have spent a combined 14 of the first 26 weeks of the year at No. 1 on the Billboard Canadian Hot 100, with 98 million and 49 million on-demand streams, respectively. The singles teased Drake’s album Scorpion, which launched on its first weekend of release on June 29 with a combined 33 million streams.
The Weeknd’s My Dear Melancholy and Shawn Mendes’ self-titled album each debuted at the top of the Billboard Canadian Albums chart in the first half of 2018, with 19,000 album equivalent units and 32,000 album equivalent units, respectively. It is each artist’s third consecutive No. 1 album. Tory Lanez scored his first No. 1 album with Memories Don’t Die. Three other Canadian artists, Jim Cuddy, Éric Lapointe and Coeur De Pirate, each picked up the top-selling album sales total during each album’s first week of release.
Post Malone’s beerbongs & bentleys set a one-week record for on-demand audio streams from an album, with 43.4 million streams, surpassing the previous record of 42.8 million held by Drake for his album, More Life. Drake’s “God’s Plan” is the top-streamed song so far this year (on-demand audio) with 73 million streams.
beerbongs & bentleys leads in total audio album equivalent consumption so far this year (albums + TEA + on-demand audio SEA) with 206,000. The album is followed by Ed Sheeran’s Divide and the soundtrack Black Panther: The Album.
Canadian artists also topped the radio airplay format charts in the first half of the year.
At CHR, The Weeknd’s team up with Kendrick Lamar, “Pray For Me” spent two weeks at No. 1, marking the singer’s third chart-topping hit at the format. With “Body,” dance duo Loud Luxury became the first Canadian act to top the CHR format chart with their first charted song since Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated” in 2002.
The Sheepdogs achieved their third No. 1 song on the Mainstream Rock chart with “I’ve Got A Hole Where My Heart Should Be.”
At Modern Rock, Arcade Fire’s “Creature Comfort” gave the band its third chart-topper at the format, while breakouts Black Pistol Fire scored a No. 1 hit with their first charted song, “Lost Cause.”
See the Nielsen Music Canada Mid-Year Report HERE
The Weeknd at Rogers Centre in Toronto on August 8, 2025.Hyghly Alleyne, Courtesy XO Records