Morgan Wallen’s ‘One Thing at a Time’ Is Luminate’s Top Album of 2023 in U.S.

1/11/2024

Luminate’s Year-End U.S. Report: Album consumption increased 12.6%, album sales grew again and Taylor Swift has five of the year’s top 10 albums.

Credit: David Lehr

Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time closed out 2023 as the most popular album of the year in the U.S., according to music data tracking firm Luminate. The album’s lead single, “Last Night,” was the year’s most-streamed song by on-demand audio streams, while Miley Cyrus’ “Flowers” was the most-heard song on the radio. Total music consumption in the U.S. – as measured in equivalent album units – increased by 12.6% in 2023. (View the U.S. 2023 Luminate Year-End Music Report.)

But first, the fine print:

Equivalent album units – for album titles and chart rankings cited below (but not industry volume numbers) – comprise traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album, or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album. Album titles and album chart rankings by equivalent album units do not include user-generated content (UGC) streams, but UGC streams are included in Luminate’s industry volume numbers. (UGC streams are not factored into any of Billboard’s weekly charts.)

For the sake of clarity, equivalent album units do not include listening to music on broadcast radio or digital radio broadcasts. All numbers cited in this story are rounded, and reflect U.S. consumption only.

Luminate’s equivalent album unit totals include SEA and TEA for an album’s songs registered before an album’s release, but during the tracking period of Dec. 30, 2022, through Dec. 28, 2023.

Luminate began tracking music sales in 1991 when the company was known as SoundScan. Luminate’s sales, streaming and airplay data is used to compile Billboard’s weekly charts. Luminate’s 2023 tracking year ran from Dec. 30, 2022, through Dec. 28, 2023.

Luminate is an independently operated company and a subsidiary of PME TopCo, a joint venture between Penske Media Corporation and Eldridge. Billboard is an independently operated company owned by PME Holdings, a subsidiary of PME TopCo.

Highlights from Luminate’s 2023 year-end data:

  • Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time was Luminate’s top album of 2023. It’s the second time Wallen has led the year-end list. He also was tops in 2021 with Dangerous: The Double Album.
  • On Luminate’s 2023 U.S. year-end top 10 most popular albums ranking, Taylor Swift has five of the top 10 titles – a single-year Luminate-era record.
  • Total U.S. album consumption increased by 12.6% in 2023.
  • R&B/hip-hop continues to hold firm as the top U.S. core genre by total album consumption; the world music genre – inclusive of the Korean pop (K-pop) genre – had the largest percentage gain year-over-year.
  • Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” tallied 1.015 billion U.S. on-demand audio streams in 2023 — the most U.S. on-demand audio streams a song has earned in a calendar year. It is only the second song ever to exceed 1 billion on-demand audio streams in a calendar year.
  • Yearly U.S. on-demand audio streams surpassed 1 trillion for the second time.
  • 27% of all on-demand audio streams in the U.S. in 2023 were R&B/hip-hop songs, the largest share of any core genre.
  • Swift’s 1989 (Taylor’s Version) is the first vinyl album in Luminate history to sell 1 million copies in a calendar year in the U.S.
  • Swift sold more albums in 2023 than any other act, accounting for 6% of all albums sold, industry-wide.
  • The top 10-selling CD albums of 2023 were all by Swift or K-pop acts.
  • Total U.S. album sales grew 5.2% in 2023 – just the second year that album sales grew in the last 10 years.
  • U.S. vinyl album sales outsold CDs for the third year in a row. 2023 marked the 18th consecutive year vinyl album sales grew in the U.S., and the largest year for vinyl album sales since Luminate began tracking data in 1991.
  • 47.1% of all albums sold in 2023 in the U.S. – across all configurations, physical & digital combined – were vinyl LPs. 57% of all physical albums sold were vinyl.
  • Total U.S. album sales for the year (physical and digital download purchases combined) grew by 5.2%.
  • Swift’s 1989 (Taylor’s Version) sold 1.975 million in traditional album sales in the U.S. in 2023 – the biggest-selling album of any year since 2015.

One Thing at a Time debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart dated March 18, 2023, and spent 16 nonconsecutive weeks atop the tally. That marked the most weeks at No. 1 for any album since Adele’s blockbuster 21 spent 24 nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 in 2011-12. One Thing at a Time is the second Wallen album to be named Luminate’s year-end No. 1 album, after his previous release, Dangerous: The Double Album, in 2021. Wallen is the first artist to have Luminate’s year-end No. 1 album twice in a three-year span since Drake led the year-end ranking in 2018 (with Scorpion) and in 2016 (with Views).

Nearly all of One Thing at a Time’s units earned in 2023 were powered by on-demand streams of its 36 songs. Its collected tracks generated 6.657 billion on-demand streams in the U.S., equaling 92.5% of the album’s total activity for the year (or, 4.962 million SEA units of its total 5.362 million units). One Thing at a Time was also the most-streamed album of 2023.

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