How Americans Buy Music, September 2015 [CHART]

A slight majority (52%) of Americans’ spending on music goes to live events, says Nielsen in reporting the results of a recent survey. Admission to live music concerts represents the largest share of music-related expenditures; at almost one-third (32%) of all spending, concert admissions alone are on par with combined spending on physical forms of music (13%), digital tracks/albums (11%) and music gift cards (7%).

While there’s roughly an equal weight in overall spending between live events and recorded music, Millennials (18-34) and Hispanics skew more towards live events. For Millennials, 64% of all music-related spending goes to live events, while for Hispanics events account for 61% of all expenditures. Both groups over-index in share of dollars spent on music festivals and admission to DJ events, while under-indexing on satellite radio subscriptions and gift cards.