2018 was certainly a good year for music and the music industry. The year has witnessed some of the most radical changes in the music industry. Streaming has become a great trend in the year and people have memorized the top edm songs of the year after listening to their favorite artists perform them in live gigs. Another trend that attracted major attention in the year was the collaborations of artists across genres. Many DJs and edm artists have been seen performing with hip hop artists and rappers in the year- both in music albums and live.
In 2018, 901 billion streams were experienced in US alone. These got translated into 267.4 billion clicks from within the country. Here comes the most interesting fact! 30 percent of the earning that the US music industry made in 2018 from live streaming is for the combined genre of Hip Hop and R&B. This means that clearly, 9 out of 10 artists in the most streamed category from 2018 are rappers. Drake is leading this list with his album Scorpion that became popular overnight after its release. He bagged the title on being the most streamed artist with 11.3 billion on demand streams in the year, becoming the first artist to cross the 10 billion mark in the live streaming game. He is followed by Post Malone who had 7.51 billion streams in the year.
Sadly, XXX Tentacion passed away in the year during the month of June. However, he managed to get the third most views for live streams in the year with a total number of 6.91 billion streams. He is closely followed by Eminem who launched his 10th studio album Kamikaze in the year. He was able to wind up with 4.82 billion hits on his live streams in 2018. Apart from these, NBA YoungBoy, Migos, Travis Scott, Cardi B and Lil Baby were other rappers that people adored during the last year. From other musical genres apart from rap, Ariana Grande was the top ranking artist who was able to get 3.28 billion live streams, making rock the second favorite of people from all over the world.
The year also noticed a strange trend in terms of live streaming rankings. Female artists rose to popularity but were, sadly, not able to give a tough competition to many male artists. The popularity of Drake followed by some other male rappers was not much of a threat but still many separate lists were launched to evaluate the popularity of female rappers of US. Cardi B was able to top this list with Dua Lipa following her, but the number of their live streams was nowhere near what male artists have been able to achieve in the year. Anyhow, Spotify remained the central platform for the most popular live streams in the year and launched a separate list for the top ranking female rappers of the year. Rap fans all over the world are now looking forward to 2019, hoping that new artists will occupy the stage in this year.