• by Wayne Friedman , January 6, 2017

Individual music album and song sales continue to decline in 2016, but streaming -- especially through subscription services — rocketed higher.

Song sales were down 25% in 2016  to 734.2 million units, while album sales slipped 15.6% to 173.4 million. But on-demand audio streams almost doubled -- up 82.6% to 250.7 billion streams, according to BuzzAngle Music, a music retail researcher.

Among those who use on-demand audio streaming, paid subscription services are rising faster than ad-supported services. Ad-supported platforms are up 14.3% to 59.3 billion over 2015, and paid subscription services have more than doubled -- 124.3% -- to 191.4 billion (124.3% more than 2015).

Seventy-six percent of on-demand streams came from paid subscriptions in 2016, up from only 62% last year. Conversely, on-demand video streaming of music grew at a modest 7.5% in 2016 to 181.3 billion over 169.0 billion in 2015.

Album sales -- digital and CDs -- declined. Digital albums dropped 19.4% to 83.9 billion, while CDs were down 14% to 82.2 million. Only vinyl album showed gains -- up 26% to 7.2 million.  But physical album sales -- were were down 12% to 89.4 million.

Overall, there were 1.2 billion overall song streams versus 734 million song sales. This came from 28 million unique, individual songs played via streaming services in 2016. Only 7 million unique songs were purchased in 2016.