Hip-Hop’s domination continues.
With final tallies in, the combined genre of R&B/Hip-Hop accounted for the most streaming activity across any genre, earning 30 percent of all on-demand streams in the United States in the 2018 tracking year, which translates to 267.4 billion clicks out of the 901 billion total streams experienced last year.
Upon further examination, it’s no surprise with 9 of the top 10 most-streamed artists of the year all being rappers. As previously reported, Drake took the crown as the most-streamed artist with 11.13 billion on-demand streams, passing his personal best of 6.4 billion, set in 2017.
Following closely behind is Post Malone with 7.51 billion streams earned off the strength of beerbongs & bentleys. The remaining names are all the obvious picks–artists who had a strong stake in social impact this year, whether positively or negatively.
At No. 3, we find the late XXXTentacion, whose catalog drew in 6.91 billion streams with Eminem following up with 4.82 billion. Next is NBA YoungBoy with 4.46 billion, Migos at 4.17 billion, Travis Scott with 4.01 billion, Cardi B with 3.99 billion and Lil Baby at 3.82 billion. Closing out the Top 10 to make it inclusive of any other genre is Ariana Grande, who earned 3.28 billion streams for her work.
The next genre that even comes close to Hip-Hop’s figures is Rock, which garnered 14.2 percent of the streaming clicks this year, earning over 100 billion streams less with 127.5 billion on-demand clicks.
