The rise in streaming because of coronavirus has been well documented around these parts, but now a full three months in, we’re getting a better view at exactly how streaming was affected.
Transactional on demand, or purchasing content piece-by-piece, peaked in April with around 13.5 million transactions for the month and slowly declined since to an average of 12 million transactions per month. But even in “decline” it was still well above normal for comparison, the months of January and February 2020 saw around 10.5 million and 10 million transactions respectively.
Paid subscription streaming followed a similar pattern but had a more pronounced peak, seeing 260 million transactions in April but then falling to around 190 million transactions per month (compared to 160 million and 130 million for January and February 2020).
Free streaming transactions took a bit of a different path. Numbers shot up in April with 520 million transactions but then stayed consistent through the next months (compared to 460 million and 440 million for January and February).
Across all categories of streaming, transactions were up 24% in April 2020 over April of 2019. Taking a look at data from January to May, April did indeed see the biggest year-over-year increase, even further showing the point that pandemic streaming peaked in April but then trickled down just a little bit to still high, but not quite as high levels.
Appropriately enough, one of the biggest gainers in on-demand streaming was fitness content (since gyms were closed), which saw a staggering 486% increase year-over-year and sports content (since sports were shut down), which saw an incredible 925% increase year-over-year.
This data is courtesy of Comscore, a leading media measurement and analytics company
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