Nielsen has released its 2015 Nielsen Music U.S. Report, which highlights how Rap and R&B fared in terms of sales last year.
Thanks to the release of such successful albums as Drake’s If Youre Reading This Its Too Late and Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly, album sales for R&B/Hip-Hop were up 2 percent overall compared to 2014, Nielsen’s report says.
Digital Album sales for R&B/Hip-Hop albums were up 19 compared to 2014.
R&B/Hip-Hop was the second-highest consumed genre per the report. It has 18.2 percent consumption, trailing only Rock in terms of sales for albums, track equivalent albums and streaming equivalent albums.
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Drake’s If Your Reading This Its Too Late is the #6 Overall album of 2015 in terms of sales for albums, track equivalent albums and streaming equivalent albums with a total of 1.9 million units. It also was the #2 digital album of 2015 with sales of 985,000.
Two rap albums joined If Your Reading This Its Too Late among the top digital albums in terms of sales in 2015. Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly was the #7 album with 516,000 units sold, while What A Time To Be Alive, Drake’s project with Future, was the #9 album with sales of 508,000.
Fetty Wap’s self-titled project was #10 overall album with sales of 1.2 million.
In another sales section of the report, Wiz Khalifa’s “See You Again” featuring Charlie Puth was the #3 Digital Song of the year, with sales of 3.8 million. Fetty Wap’s “Trap Queen” was #7 with sales of 2.7 million. Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood,” which features Kendrick Lamar, was the #10 single of the year with sales of 2.5 million.
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In the “Music Consumption” section of its 2015 Year In Music Review, Nielsen says that the most-tweeted minute of the Grammys came on February 8 at 10:42 p.m. EST when 121,000 Tweets were sent after Kanye West approached the stage following Beck’s win for Album of the Year.
Another Rap-related item of note was that on March 30, there was a 5.5 percent increase in streams of Jay Z’s “Big Pimpin,” which coincides with TIDAL’s press launch.
