Morgan Wallen isn’t just dominating the Billboard charts in 2023 — he’s also leading a massive spike in the genre’s listenership.
Just how big is the Wallen effect? One out of every 10 country tracks streamed so far this year has been by the Big Loud/Republic artist.
Propelled by Wallen, country music consumption in the United States is up 20.3% year-over-year in the first 26 weeks of 2023, according to Luminate. That’s a huge improvement from the 2.5% growth the genre experienced over the same period in 2022; only K-pop (up 46.2%) and Latin (up 20.6%) have grown more so far this year. With the entire on-demand streaming market up 15% over the first six months of the year, rock (up 11.4%), pop (up 7.6%) and R&B/hip-hop (up 4.9%) lag far behind in terms of growth but still dominate overall market share (25.3% for pop, 24.7% for R&B/hip-hop and 20.1% for rock).
Wallen, who is currently on a sold-out stadium tour, is the single biggest driver in the increase. He alone accounted for 40% of the growth in country consumption this year. Through week 26, Wallen has moved 4.9 million equivalent album units (EAUs), representing 10.4% of all country consumption. (EAUs combine album sales with track sales and streams converted into equivalent album units.) That’s more than double his 4.4% share in the prior-year period. In addition to One Thing at a Time’s dominance, the album’s third single, “Last Night,” remains at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart for the 13th week.
As Billboard has reported, a new crop of male country artists including Zach Bryan, Bailey Zimmerman, Jelly Roll and Nate Smith are fueling a fresh wave of success for the genre — and the numbers bear that out. Wallen and fellow superstar Luke Combs, along with Bryan and Zimmerman, account for 69% of country music’s year-to-date consumption growth.
Total country consumption through week 26 (the tracking week ended June 29) was 46.7 million EAUs. That tally is around 7.9 million EAUs higher than the same 26-week period in 2022.
For the week ending June 29, Wallen’s One Thing At A Time surpassed 100,000 weekly EAUs for the 17th week, the most weeks for any album since the Billboard 200 began ranking titles by units in December 2014. It surpasses the 16 frames of 100,000-plus logged by Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti in 2022.
The increases come as Wallen, fellow stadium act Combs and artists coming up after the newly crowned superstars are putting up big numbers on streaming platforms. Country’s on-demand audio streaming rose 23.8% in the first 26 weeks of 2023. That’s a big jump over the same period in 2022 when it was up just 8.5%.
While Wallen had the biggest impact on country’s year-over-year improvement in terms of growth, other young artists also made a major impression. Bryan and Combs accounted for 11.2% and 10.6% of country’s consumption growth, respectively, while Zimmerman represented 7.2% of the improvement. Older country stars — Chris Stapleton, Jason Aldean, Kane Brown — were also top 10 artists by share of consumption, but their 2023 numbers were essentially unchanged from 2022.
Country’s banner year is clearly the result of country artists putting up blistering streaming numbers, but album sales played an important role in the genre’s rebound. Releases by Wallen, Combs and Taylor Swift pushed the genre’s album sales up 0.1% year to date, compared to a 21.4% decline in the prior-year period. Last year, country artists sold 3.84 million albums in the first 26 weeks of 2022, with Swift and Stapleton the only country artists to sell more than 100,000 albums each. This year, Wallen and Swift both broke 200,000 units — 308,000 for Wallen, 258,000 for Swift — while Combs sold 135,000 and Stapleton sold 108,000. (Luminate categorizes Swift’s first four albums — her self-titled debut, Fearless, Speak Now and Red, including both the original collections and her Taylor’s Version remakes — as country.)
Part of the growth in album sales can be chalked up to the timing of releases by Wallen, Combs, Bryan and Zimmerman. The first 24 weeks of 2022 were relatively quiet for major new releases. It was an off-year for Wallen, whose previous album, Dangerous: The Double Album, was released in 2021. Bryan’s major label debut, American Heartbreak, was released on May 20, 2022 — near the end of the 26-week period — and was still in the top 20 a year later. Combs’ album, Growin’ Up, was released on June 24, 2022, near the end of the 26-week period (it remains on the Billboard 200 to this day) while its companion set, Getting’ Old, was released in March 2023. Zimmerman’s debut EP, Leave the Light On, was released in October 2022, while his debut full-length album, Religiously. The Album, came out in May 2023. Both sets included his back-to-back Country Airplay No. 1s, “Fall in Love” and “Rock and a Hard Place.”
