• by Wayne Friedman , July 5, 2016

Music streaming in the digital media world has taken a new direction. For the first time, audio streaming has topped video streaming, according to a new report.

There have been 114.2 billion audio streams for the first six months of 2016 versus 95.1 billion video streams, according to a report by music researcher BuzzAngle Music. A year ago, for the same period, there were 77.3 billion video streams and 55.0 billion audio streams.

Audio streaming has more than doubled -- 107.8% -- versus a year ago, with video streaming up 23%. Overall streaming activity has grown 58.3% to 209.4 billion streams.

BuzzAngle Music says that for the first time streaming from audio services, like Spotify and Apple Music, exceeded video streams from YouTube, Vevo, and others.

Music sales continue to decline, with digital sales down 17.7% to 45.9 million units, albums down 14% to 86.2 million, physical music sales,= off 9.3% to 40.3 million, and CDs losing 11% to 37.2 million. Only vinyl sales have grown -- up 17.3% to 3.1 million.

But BuzzAngle Music says that when song streams are calculated and sales are factored in with album sales, album “consumption” rose by 6.5%. These calculations comes from what it says are “industry standards”: That 10 song sales or 1,500 streams equals 1 album sale, with 150 streams equalling 1 song sale.

Drake’s album “Views” posted by far and away the most audio streams for an album -- 1.6 billion audio streams. Rihanna’s “Anti” was next at 765.6 million, with Justin Bieber’s “Purpose” next at 758.2 million.