A breakdown of global on-demand streams during H1 2026. Photo Credit: Luminate

Amid double-digit streaming consumption growth for dance/electronic and world music, U.S. on-demand streams increased by about 4.8% during H1 2026, when physical sales topped 38 million units.

These and other stats come from Luminate, which today released its midyear report. Clocking in at 75 pages, the breakdown contains data pertaining to not only music, but film and TV as well.

Keeping the focus on music here, the analysis points to about 733 billion on-demand song streams in the U.S. for the half-year window, reflecting the aforementioned 4.8% year-over-year (YoY) growth.

Though the figure topped Canada’s on-demand stream-volume improvement, up 3.6% YoY to 77.4 billion plays, it finished beneath the global counterpart (up 9.8% YoY to 2.8 trillion), according to the report. Excluding U.S. streaming, on-demand’s global YoY boost came in at closer to 11.8%.

By genre, the initially highlighted dance/electronic enjoyed an 18.9% YoY hike in U.S. on-demand streams during H1 2026, compared to 11.9% for world music and 6.5% for pop, the resource shows.

Admittedly, the percentages don’t come as a surprise; regarding the across-the-board figures, established music spaces are grappling with a streaming plateau, while a number of emerging markets are benefiting from rapid userbase (and to a lesser extent subscribership) expansions.

Even so, additional data is always a good thing – especially because methodology and hard consumption stats now vary from source to source. Speaking of methodology questions, on the physical side, the report identifies a 7.8% YoY increase for U.S. sales – referring specifically to 38.2 million total vinyl, cassette, and CD units moved during Q1 and Q2.

Therein, CDs achieved 16% YoY growth to 16.3 million units, against a 2.4% YoY uptick for the long-surging vinyl format, the document indicates. Furthermore, about “half of Gen Z and Millennials who have purchased a CD do not OWN a CD Player,” per the report.

At the intersection of both trends – CDs flying off the shelves when buyers cannot easily use them – K-pop mainstays including BTS (567,000 Arirang CDs moved in the U.S. during H1 2026) and Enhypen (286,000 The Sin: Vanish CDs sold) fueled material gains, according to the report.

Notwithstanding the questions associated with indie-store physical sales, mass-market data (from retail giants like Target and Walmart) is presumably accurate. BTS moved a total of 727,000 CDs and records at mass-market stores throughout H1 2026, with 230,000 units to Enhypen’s credit, the breakdown shows.

Different of the midyear summary’s findings rest not on a solid foundation of facts, but on a precarious combination of opinions and attention-grabbing conclusions.

First, Luminate remains adamant that Latin’s “casual listening” consumption share, having peaked at 54% in Q1 2026, is indicative of “a profound expansion of the genre’s footprint beyond its traditional base.”

Latin’s global reach and revenue are, in fact, growing. Nevertheless, “profound expansion” might be a bit of an overstatement. Per the report, the genre’s first-quarter “casual” U.S. consumption share (as a percentage of listeners) rose about 1% from late 2025, and that was after Bad Bunny took the Super Bowl Halftime Show stage.

More pressingly, some will justifiably find fault with the broad claim that “musicians themselves” are “embracing generative AI as an assistive creative tool to remix, edit and redefine the boundaries of modern music production.”

“54% of U.S. musicians show positive feelings and acceptance toward gen AI tools in music, compared with 35% of non-musicians,” a related line reads.

Of course, many musicians may have something to say about the all-is-well statement and the idea that gen AI enjoys majority support in the industry, which is actively responding to an avalanche of machine-made slop on DSPs.