Best-Selling Music: Data from 1910 to 2024

This video provides a comprehensive analysis of the monetary dominance of music genres within the music market from 1910 to 2024. By segmenting artists into their associated genres, this study aggregates their cumulative sales figures to determine the annual market size of each category, measured in U.S. dollars. Inflation adjustments are intentionally omitted to maintain historical accuracy in nominal terms. The data includes sales from physical formats such as phonograph cylinders, shellac records, vinyl LPs, cassette tapes, and compact discs for earlier years, transitioning to digital downloads and streaming platforms (e.g., Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music) for recent decades. This integration ensures accuracy across a century of evolving distribution methods. Genres are categorized using a color-coding system to group subgenres into broader stylistic families. Additionally, golden stars denote genres that held the number one position in market size during any year. Although the statistics are primarily based on U.S. sales data, occasional supplementation with European figures allows this dataset to serve as a global proxy due to the U.S. and Europe's outsized share in global music revenues. The video presents annualized figures. Your feedback is always welcome. Got topic suggestions? Drop me a message! ***** Hi, I'm Sasha. I crunch numbers, play with data, and create cool visuals. If you enjoy my work, a little support can get me a coffee and a cookie for my baby girl, Eva ☕🍪 https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/datai...