R&B and hip-hop led U.S. streaming at 2026’s halfway point
The genres accounted for nearly one in four on-demand audio streams, according to Luminate data reported by AP.
Ultrasone studio headphones. Contextual photograph. Melissa Ursula Dawn Goldsmith · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Resized for display.
The Associated Press’ account of Luminate’s 2026 midyear report puts R&B and hip-hop at nearly one in four U.S. on-demand audio streams in the first half of the year—about 180.3 billion streams combined. Together, the genres remained the country’s largest streaming category.
Scale and share tell different stories
AP also reported that R&B and hip-hop made up 30% of U.S. album-equivalent consumption in the first half of 2026, based on Billboard 200 analysis, compared with 41% in 2023. That is a different measure from stream share. Latin and country grew as the listening mix widened.
