The music industry in Canada has never been stronger with record consumption, growing live music attendance and a new class of emerging artists.
Overall consumption of albums, songs and audio on-demand streaming grew 13.6% year over year. Audio on-demand streaming offset decreases in track and album sales, and on December 3, for the first time in history, surpassed the 900 million per week mark.
R&B/Hip-Hop was Canada’s fastest-growing music genre of the year, with an 86% increase in audio on-demand streaming consumption over 2016. The genre introduced us to new Canadian acts such as Daniel Caesar and Nav, who found success on both sides of the border. Overall, seven of the year’s 10 most-streamed artists in Canada came from the R&B/Hip-Hop genre.
Highlights from the 2017 Canada Music Year-End Report include:
- Ed Sheeran led all artists in Canada with overall consumption and had the top selling album of the year with Divide. His “Shape Of You” single spent 16 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Canadian Hot 100 and remained in the top 20 for 50 weeks.
- Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito” became the first Latin single to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Canadian Hot 100 and ended the year as the second most-streamed song.
- Justin Bieber collaborated with other artists on four top five songs in 2017, despite not releasing his own album.
- Six Canadians had No. 1 albums on the Billboard Canadian Albums chart in 2017 including The Weeknd’s Starboy, Drake’s More Life, Arcade Fire’s Everything Now, Shania Twain’s Now, Pierre Lapointe’s La Science Du Coeur and Gord Downie’s Introduce Yourself.
- The passing of Gord Downie captured the nation’s attention. In the week following his death, The Tragically Hip’s overall consumption increased by 1,000% over the previous week. Also, six of the group’s albums re-entered the Billboard Canadian Albums chart.
- Old music and formats also had a renaissance at retail this year with vinyl posting its seventh consecutive year of sales growth. Catalogue album sales represented 59% of vinyl album sales, the highest percentage to date.
