AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Last month, we brought you the story of what seemed to be a hot artist dominating the charts.
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CORNISH: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In 2016, the Universal Music Group released a 200-CD box set of the composer's works. Multiply that by the 6,000-odd sets sold as of early December, and you had 1 and a quarter million CDs. And that, we said, put Mozart atop the Billboard chart.
Well, David Bakula says that's not right, and he should know. He's the senior vice president of Nielsen music. They collect the data that Billboard uses to make its best-seller list. And he joins us now. Welcome to the program, David.
DAVID BAKULA: Thanks so much, Audie.
CORNISH: OK, so we and many other people were super wrong about this (laughter).
BAKULA: Yeah.
CORNISH: What was the real best-selling album of 2016?
BAKULA: Well, there - yeah, there was a little bit of confusion there I think. And certainly we don't multiply the number of disks by the sale. So when you do look at the total consumption for the year in terms of albums, you had Drake's "Views" record being the top record of the year.
In terms of sales, it was bested by Adele, Adele's "25" record, which actually came out at the end of 2015 but obviously continued to sell very well throughout the year. But when we talk about all of the songs that were purchased individually, all of the streams that happened, Drake was the biggest of the year.
CORNISH: Yeah, help us understand that. Does the word sales mean anything anymore? Like, is that physical CDs? Is that digital sales?
BAKULA: Sure. It means less and less I think every year, and we are finding that audio on demand streaming is becoming a very big piece of the industry. If you look at the revenue that's coming in, obviously the album is still the main driver of revenue on a per-transaction basis.
We had over 250 billion audio streams last year. And even if you do multiply that by a very small per-play rate, you still get a massive amount of money to the point where audio on demand streaming is actually making up 38 percent of the total consumption now.
CORNISH: Yeah, but in the meantime, you have traditional album sales down 16 percent - right? - like digital singles...
BAKULA: Yep.
CORNISH: ...Sales down 25 percent. So we're just...
BAKULA: Right.
CORNISH: ...Not buying music anymore...
BAKULA: Well...
CORNISH: ...Buying it to hold on to, anyway.
BAKULA: Certainly digital is going through this transformation much more quickly than physical is. The technologically advanced consumer is realizing the value that is in streaming and is shifting over from sales to just access much more quickly than it is in physical.
Physical has some things holding it up. I mean obviously you do have a consumer that maybe hasn't switched over to digital yet, but you also have a consumer that is in love with vinyl. You know, that consumer is getting to be a significant piece of the physical business. This year, it was about 11 percent of the total physical business.
CORNISH: So your DJs, superfans...
BAKULA: Yes.
CORNISH: ...Completists - they will still...
BAKULA: Audiophiles.
CORNISH: ...Go get the vinyl.
BAKULA: Yeah, they love the vinyl.
CORNISH: So we're not looking at an industry that is in freefall basically.
BAKULA: No, certainly not. I think people that look at the traditional metrics of album sales are really only looking at a small fraction of the total industry. But if you bring streaming into that, you bring all the consumption in, you see an industry that's very healthy.
CORNISH: You mentioned Adele, also Drake. The rapper had a good year - right? - with his album "Views."
BAKULA: Fantastic year, yeah.
CORNISH: And then I remember Chance the Rapper did pretty well, too, almost exclusively on streaming.
BAKULA: Yeah, it was exclusively on streaming. And that's I think one of the really interesting things. And the Grammys - you know, the Grammy board is recognizing Chance for what he has done this year as well. You've got - streaming is the only component to the charts that Chance the Rapper had this year, and he stayed on the top 200 chart for 33 straight weeks and counting. He's still on the charts.
And yeah, to get over 500,000 equivalent albums just out of streaming, you've - he's had so much streaming this year that it's the same equivalency as selling over 500,000 albums.
CORNISH: So at the end of the day, where does that leave our friend Mozart?
BAKULA: (Laughter) I'm afraid Mozart didn't quite make it this year. He's not going to be anywhere near the top of the charts again because we don't count it by disc. He's going to show up with about 250 sales this year.
CORNISH: All right.
BAKULA: (Laughter).
CORNISH: I think he's done all right. I think legacy's fine.
BAKULA: Mozart's estate is doing just fine, sure.
CORNISH: David Bakula is senior vice president of Nielsen music. Thank you so much for speaking with us.
BAKULA: Thanks so much for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE ENGLISH CONCERT PERFORMANCE OF MOZART'S "EINE KLEINE NACHTMUSIK")