![\"Billboard](\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/2HpFicp.png\")
<\/p>\nR&B\/Hip-Hop Still Dominates, Despite Downturn<\/h2>\n\nA<\/span>pproximately one in every four streams today are for songs that fall into the R&B\/hip-hop classification, but the genre\u2019s share of listening has continued to decline year-over-year for the last few years. Since mid-year 2025, R&B\/hip-hop as a category fell 1.6% \u2014 a percentage that was picked up by growing genres like dance\/electronic, country and Latin.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\tThe genre has also \u201cexperienced the sharpest decline in equivalent market share since 2023\u201d on the Billboard 200 albums chart, giving way to gains by pop, country, rock and Latin. R&B\/hip-hop used to make up well over 40% of Billboard 200 market share in the first half of 2023, but it\u2019s fallen to about 30% at midyear in 2026.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n
- \n
\nDance\/Electronic and World Music Grow the Most<\/h2>\n\nD<\/span>ance\/electronic grew the most in the first half of 2026. The genre is up 18.9% year-over-year in U.S. on-demand audio streams, led by hot current acts like John Summit and Disco Lines along with a boom for dance songs released between 2015 and 2017. In fact, half of the top 10 dance\/electronic songs in the first half of the year were from the 2015-2017 period. World music is also up, growing 11.9% year-over-year. It\u2019s also the genre which has the highest percentage of current listening: 34% of popular world music songs are 0-18 months old, followed by songs that are 18-60 months old with a 26.5% share of listening in the genre.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n- \n
\nIn Rock Music, It\u2019s All About Nostalgia<\/h2>\n\nO<\/span>lder music dominates in rock: 75% of rock listening comes from tracks older than 60 months, marking a 5% uplift in deep catalog listening from this time last year. Current hits for the genre this year, however, include Noah Kahan\u2019s The Great Divide <\/em>which earned 1.35 million total equivalent album sales. Despite a lack of strong current listenership, rock remains the second-most streamed genre in the U.S. behind R&B\/Hip-Hop.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n- \n
\nK-pop Fans Lead Physical Sales\u00a0<\/h2>\n\nI<\/span>t comes as little surprise that K-pop groups like BTS, ENHYPEN and ATEEZ lead in mass market physical album sales, meaning sales conducted at big box retailers like Target and Walmart. Independent retailers are losing ground this year to the bigger chains, falling from a 36.6% share of sales in 2025 to 32.1% in 2026, a dip of 4.5%. E-commerce sales also saw a 1.3% dip, falling from 27.4% of sales in 2025 to 26.1% this year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n- \n
\nWant Fans to Buy Your Physical Album? Make K-pop or Indie Rock!<\/strong><\/h2>\n\nT<\/span>he Luminate report finds that upon comparing genres, K-pop and indie rock fans are the most engaged and most likely to buy products from their favorite artists. Conversely, country and pop fans are the most likely to be lean-back listeners, preferring to stream an artist but not necessarily buy merch and physical albums.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\tBetween K-pop and indie rock, the latter genre has a larger percentage of overall listeners who are what Luminate calls \u201cpurchase-based superfans,\u201d at about 40% of fans. K-pop has about 38% of fans who are purchase-based, but the genre ranks higher than indie rock in \u201cengagement-based fans\u201d with nearly 35% of the total fanbase, versus 30% for indie rock.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n
- \n
\nCD Sales Are All the Rage<\/h2>\n\nF<\/span>or the last decade, physical sales have climbed. But, until now, most of the conversation has been around vinyl record sales. Now, U.S. CD sales are surging, up 16% to 16.3 million units in the first half of 2026 \u2014 outpacing vinyl, which grew by 2.4%. Luminate did not state how many units of vinyl were sold in comparison, though vinyl sales likely still are higher than CDs despite the slower growth rate.<\/p>\n\n\tCD sales have K-pop to thank for such a surge. If BTS\u2019 latest album ARIRANG <\/em>and other K-pop sales are taken out of the equation, U.S. CD sales would have been up by 6.7% in the first half of 2026. Luminate suggests that this CD surge indicates the format is now being popularized as \u201can affordable collectible\u201d for younger fans. \u201cThe act of buying physical music is as much about aesthetic ownership and direct financial support for the artist as it is listening to the music on the product itself,\u201d the report reads.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\tPerhaps for some, CDs are even more important as an aesthetic product. According to Luminate, approximately half of Gen-Z and millennials who have purchased a CD do not own a CD player.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n
- \n
\nEnglish-Language Music Declines in the U.S. From 2025<\/h2>\n\nI<\/span>n the U.S., English-language songs declined in the first half of 2026, down from 88.1% in 2025 to 87.1% as streaming consumption continues to diversify. This year to date, nearly 1 in 10 streams in the U.S. are now in Spanish (or 9.4%), a figure that is thanks, in part, to a massive year for Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny, who performed at the Super Bowl halftime show earlier this year. Korean-language music also stays steady this year at a U.S. market share of 1.1%. It remains the third most popular language for music in America, owing to the continued strength of K-pop hits.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\tLatin music is also benefiting from a growing number of \u201ccasual\u201d U.S. listeners. According to Luminate, in Q3 of 2021, 44% of music fans in the U.S. considered themselves casual listeners of Latin. As of Q1 in 2026, that number is now 54%, indicating that the genre is becoming more a part of mass market culture in the United States and breaking much further than its traditional Spanish-speaking audience.<\/p>\n
\n\tDespite the continued popularity of Latin music, the overall recent trend for English-language music in the U.S. is relatively steady: a four-year view reveals that its share is holding at around 87% to almost 89%, including an 88.8% share in FY 2023, and 87.5% share in 2024. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n
- \n
\nBreakout British Stars Cause Surge in U.K. Listening in the U.S. Market<\/h2>\n\nA<\/span>merican artists hold a strong two-thirds market share in U.S. streaming, but the U.K. has been showing stable growth in American streaming since 2024, thanks to new stars like Olivia Dean and new heights achieved by longtime talents like Charli xcx. In 2024, U.K. talent held less than a 7% share of U.S. streaming. The following year, that share hit 7%, and in 2026 to date, its share rose to 7.8%.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n- \n
\nAI Music Shows Early Traction<\/h2>\n\nI<\/span>t\u2019s still early days for AI-generated or assisted music, which first hit the music industry\u2019s radar in May 2023 with Ghostwriter\u2019s Drake deepfake \u201cHeart On My Sleeve,\u201d but Luminate data shows that some AI songs are starting to stick. The highest on-demand audio streaming song in the U.S. is Breaking Rust\u2019s country song \u201cLivin\u2019 on Borrowed Time,\u201d with 19 million streams domestically and 13.4 ex-U.S. Outside of the U.S., the biggest AI-enabled track was \u201cPapaoutai (Afro Soul)\u201d by Chill77, Unjaps and Mikeeysmind \u2014 an AI remix of Stromae\u2019s song of the same title.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\tAccording to Spotify, the copyright of \u201cPapaoutai (Afro Soul)\u201d is now claimed by a little known label called Unjaps AB and Mosaert, Stromae\u2019s label, \u201cwith courtesy of Stromae,\u201d indicating that Stromae is aware of the AI remix and has claimed some level of royalty and ownership over it. Using AI to create new remixes of pre-existing hits has become a common practice \u2014 one that some artists embrace and some try to fight by taking those remixes down.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tAdditionally, Luminate\u2019s report states that 54% of U.S. musicians show \u201cpositive feelings and acceptance towards gen AI tools in music,\u201d compared to 35% for non-musicians.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
[analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/lists\/luminate-midyear-report-2026\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/bts-world-tour-arirang-live-viewing-trailer-billboard-1800.jpg?w=1024″] In Luminate\u2019s annual midyear report for 2026, a few key takeaways are apparent: R&B\/hip-hop continues to lose ground, but remains the biggest streaming genre in the U.S.; dance\/electronic music is on the come up; and the kids are loving CDs.\u00a0 In a time when superfans care just \u201cas much about aesthetic ownership […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,226],"class_list":["post-2044762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-billboard-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2044762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2044762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2044762\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2044762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2044762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2044762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
A<\/span>pproximately one in every four streams today are for songs that fall into the R&B\/hip-hop classification, but the genre\u2019s share of listening has continued to decline year-over-year for the last few years. Since mid-year 2025, R&B\/hip-hop as a category fell 1.6% \u2014 a percentage that was picked up by growing genres like dance\/electronic, country and Latin.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe genre has also \u201cexperienced the sharpest decline in equivalent market share since 2023\u201d on the Billboard 200 albums chart, giving way to gains by pop, country, rock and Latin. R&B\/hip-hop used to make up well over 40% of Billboard 200 market share in the first half of 2023, but it\u2019s fallen to about 30% at midyear in 2026.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n D<\/span>ance\/electronic grew the most in the first half of 2026. The genre is up 18.9% year-over-year in U.S. on-demand audio streams, led by hot current acts like John Summit and Disco Lines along with a boom for dance songs released between 2015 and 2017. In fact, half of the top 10 dance\/electronic songs in the first half of the year were from the 2015-2017 period. World music is also up, growing 11.9% year-over-year. It\u2019s also the genre which has the highest percentage of current listening: 34% of popular world music songs are 0-18 months old, followed by songs that are 18-60 months old with a 26.5% share of listening in the genre.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n O<\/span>lder music dominates in rock: 75% of rock listening comes from tracks older than 60 months, marking a 5% uplift in deep catalog listening from this time last year. Current hits for the genre this year, however, include Noah Kahan\u2019s The Great Divide <\/em>which earned 1.35 million total equivalent album sales. Despite a lack of strong current listenership, rock remains the second-most streamed genre in the U.S. behind R&B\/Hip-Hop.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n I<\/span>t comes as little surprise that K-pop groups like BTS, ENHYPEN and ATEEZ lead in mass market physical album sales, meaning sales conducted at big box retailers like Target and Walmart. Independent retailers are losing ground this year to the bigger chains, falling from a 36.6% share of sales in 2025 to 32.1% in 2026, a dip of 4.5%. E-commerce sales also saw a 1.3% dip, falling from 27.4% of sales in 2025 to 26.1% this year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n T<\/span>he Luminate report finds that upon comparing genres, K-pop and indie rock fans are the most engaged and most likely to buy products from their favorite artists. Conversely, country and pop fans are the most likely to be lean-back listeners, preferring to stream an artist but not necessarily buy merch and physical albums.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBetween K-pop and indie rock, the latter genre has a larger percentage of overall listeners who are what Luminate calls \u201cpurchase-based superfans,\u201d at about 40% of fans. K-pop has about 38% of fans who are purchase-based, but the genre ranks higher than indie rock in \u201cengagement-based fans\u201d with nearly 35% of the total fanbase, versus 30% for indie rock.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n F<\/span>or the last decade, physical sales have climbed. But, until now, most of the conversation has been around vinyl record sales. Now, U.S. CD sales are surging, up 16% to 16.3 million units in the first half of 2026 \u2014 outpacing vinyl, which grew by 2.4%. Luminate did not state how many units of vinyl were sold in comparison, though vinyl sales likely still are higher than CDs despite the slower growth rate.<\/p>\n \n\tCD sales have K-pop to thank for such a surge. If BTS\u2019 latest album ARIRANG <\/em>and other K-pop sales are taken out of the equation, U.S. CD sales would have been up by 6.7% in the first half of 2026. Luminate suggests that this CD surge indicates the format is now being popularized as \u201can affordable collectible\u201d for younger fans. \u201cThe act of buying physical music is as much about aesthetic ownership and direct financial support for the artist as it is listening to the music on the product itself,\u201d the report reads.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tPerhaps for some, CDs are even more important as an aesthetic product. According to Luminate, approximately half of Gen-Z and millennials who have purchased a CD do not own a CD player.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n I<\/span>n the U.S., English-language songs declined in the first half of 2026, down from 88.1% in 2025 to 87.1% as streaming consumption continues to diversify. This year to date, nearly 1 in 10 streams in the U.S. are now in Spanish (or 9.4%), a figure that is thanks, in part, to a massive year for Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny, who performed at the Super Bowl halftime show earlier this year. Korean-language music also stays steady this year at a U.S. market share of 1.1%. It remains the third most popular language for music in America, owing to the continued strength of K-pop hits.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tLatin music is also benefiting from a growing number of \u201ccasual\u201d U.S. listeners. According to Luminate, in Q3 of 2021, 44% of music fans in the U.S. considered themselves casual listeners of Latin. As of Q1 in 2026, that number is now 54%, indicating that the genre is becoming more a part of mass market culture in the United States and breaking much further than its traditional Spanish-speaking audience.<\/p>\n \n\tDespite the continued popularity of Latin music, the overall recent trend for English-language music in the U.S. is relatively steady: a four-year view reveals that its share is holding at around 87% to almost 89%, including an 88.8% share in FY 2023, and 87.5% share in 2024. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n A<\/span>merican artists hold a strong two-thirds market share in U.S. streaming, but the U.K. has been showing stable growth in American streaming since 2024, thanks to new stars like Olivia Dean and new heights achieved by longtime talents like Charli xcx. In 2024, U.K. talent held less than a 7% share of U.S. streaming. The following year, that share hit 7%, and in 2026 to date, its share rose to 7.8%.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n I<\/span>t\u2019s still early days for AI-generated or assisted music, which first hit the music industry\u2019s radar in May 2023 with Ghostwriter\u2019s Drake deepfake \u201cHeart On My Sleeve,\u201d but Luminate data shows that some AI songs are starting to stick. The highest on-demand audio streaming song in the U.S. is Breaking Rust\u2019s country song \u201cLivin\u2019 on Borrowed Time,\u201d with 19 million streams domestically and 13.4 ex-U.S. Outside of the U.S., the biggest AI-enabled track was \u201cPapaoutai (Afro Soul)\u201d by Chill77, Unjaps and Mikeeysmind \u2014 an AI remix of Stromae\u2019s song of the same title.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAccording to Spotify, the copyright of \u201cPapaoutai (Afro Soul)\u201d is now claimed by a little known label called Unjaps AB and Mosaert, Stromae\u2019s label, \u201cwith courtesy of Stromae,\u201d indicating that Stromae is aware of the AI remix and has claimed some level of royalty and ownership over it. Using AI to create new remixes of pre-existing hits has become a common practice \u2014 one that some artists embrace and some try to fight by taking those remixes down.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAdditionally, Luminate\u2019s report states that 54% of U.S. musicians show \u201cpositive feelings and acceptance towards gen AI tools in music,\u201d compared to 35% for non-musicians.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/lists\/luminate-midyear-report-2026\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/bts-world-tour-arirang-live-viewing-trailer-billboard-1800.jpg?w=1024″] In Luminate\u2019s annual midyear report for 2026, a few key takeaways are apparent: R&B\/hip-hop continues to lose ground, but remains the biggest streaming genre in the U.S.; dance\/electronic music is on the come up; and the kids are loving CDs.\u00a0 In a time when superfans care just \u201cas much about aesthetic ownership […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,226],"class_list":["post-2044762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-billboard-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2044762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2044762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2044762\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2044762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2044762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2044762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Dance\/Electronic and World Music Grow the Most<\/h2>\n
In Rock Music, It\u2019s All About Nostalgia<\/h2>\n
K-pop Fans Lead Physical Sales\u00a0<\/h2>\n
Want Fans to Buy Your Physical Album? Make K-pop or Indie Rock!<\/strong><\/h2>\n
CD Sales Are All the Rage<\/h2>\n
English-Language Music Declines in the U.S. From 2025<\/h2>\n
Breakout British Stars Cause Surge in U.K. Listening in the U.S. Market<\/h2>\n
AI Music Shows Early Traction<\/h2>\n