Drake Hits Major Milestone, Outstreams All Pre-1980 Tracks With His 2021 Catalog
Drake continues to cement himself as one of the largest players in the industry with his latest feat.
New market data reported by Billboard shows that Drake has outstreamed all tracks released before 1980 with just his 2021 music catalog. The OVO artist has generated more U.S. on-demand streams in 2021 than the total number of pre-1980 records combined. The data was released by Luminate, formerly known as MRC Data, which identifies entertainment analytics. According to the reports, catalog categories have continued to dominate in recent years due to “older albums from new artists.”
Across the 988.154 billion U.S. streams from 2021, the catalog business made up of 69.8% of the album consumption units in 2021, a 4.1% increase from 2020. With 90% of these units from records released this century, it proves that there is a growing demand for the “shallow catalog” or modern pop classics. The data revealed that songs released in the first decade in the 2000s accounted for 11.12% of the streams last year, whereas 2010-2019 songs made up 39.3% and music between 2020-2021 made up 39.4%. The ’80s category saw 3.42% and the ’90s only 6.07%. Billboard pointed out that tracks from the ’50s to 1979 made up of only 0.6% of streams last year, whereas Drake, whose first album came out 15 years ago, was responsible for 0.8% of all streams in 2021.
The power of Drake continues to be a force to be reckoned with, recently becoming the first Spotify artist with more than 50 billion streams as well as most-streamed artist in 2021.
