Nobody Has Counted R&B By Itself Since Q1 2025

By Lyn R.

The last time anyone published a figure for R&B on its own, R&B was up 9.1 percent. That was the first quarter of 2025, and nobody has published a standalone number since.

Everything reported since then has been “R&B/Hip-Hop,” one industry container holding two genres. So, the falling line people screenshot when saying that the genre is shrinking is that container. It is not, however, a true measurement of R&B.

The Bucket Is Real, And It Is Genuinely Shrinking

Let’s start with what is true, because a lot of it is. The combined R&B/Hip-Hop share of US streaming really is falling, and it has been for years.

Luminate, the data company whose consumption figures feed the Billboard charts, laid the run out in an April 2025 analysis. The bucket held a 25.3 percent share of US on demand audio streaming in 2024. It had ceded 1.7 share points that year, and its lead “has been steadily shrinking since 2020, if not before.”

It kept going. The same post records a further 1.0 share point drop in the first quarter of 2025 against the same quarter of 2024.

At the midyear mark this year the bucket was still the biggest in the country. Luminate’s 2026 Midyear Report puts it at “approximately 1 in every 4” US on demand audio streams. Trade coverage of the full report, including DIY Musician and Music Times, puts the year over year loss at 1.6 share points.

So the decline is not a myth. The open question is what, exactly, is declining.

Luminate Files R&B As A Subgenre, Not A Genre

Here is the structural fact both sides of the argument skip. In Luminate’s public reporting, R&B/Hip-Hop is a core genre. R&B is a subgenre sitting inside it.

That is not an inference drawn from the numbers. It is the company’s own language. The April 2025 post ranks R&B among “the five subgenres that experienced the most share growth in Q1 2025.”

The distinction decides how often you get counted. Core genres appear in the midyear and year end reports, twice a year, every year. Subgenres appear when a blog post happens to be about them.

The Only Standalone R&B Number In Existence Points Up

Read past the headline of that same Luminate analysis and the direction of travel reverses.

“For the first time in three years, R&B has finished among the five subgenres that experienced the most share growth in Q1 2025,” the company wrote, on “9.1% volume growth over this time last year.”

Luminate said it again three months later. A July 2025 post on fan growth put it plainly: “For the first time in over three years, R&B ranks among the top five U.S. subgenres in On-Demand Audio growth.” That post attaches no percentage to the ranking.

The driver, in Luminate’s own telling, was a hit. The company names “30 For 30” by SZA and Kendrick Lamar as the number one R&B song of the quarter. It logged 173.3 million in audio activity and finished eleventh among all US songs.

Core genres get counted twice a year, every year. Subgenres get counted when a blog post happens to be about them.

One Quarter Is Not A Trend, And That Is Exactly The Problem

Be honest about what 9.1 percent is worth. It covers one quarter, and it measures volume rather than share.

It is also eighteen months old.

It does not prove R&B is growing today. Nothing does, in either direction, because the number that would settle it has not been published.

That absence is the actual story here. A genre is being pronounced dead on the strength of a figure that does not measure it. The figure that would measure it goes unpublished.

We checked. Luminate’s blog carries no standalone R&B post in 2026. Its 2025 year end report reports the combined bucket, and so do the trade write ups of it, including Music Business Worldwide’s.

The RIAA’s 2025 year end revenue report is a revenue document. It does not break out genre at all.

If a source anywhere is publishing R&B on its own for 2026, we could not find it. Assume the number does not exist until someone produces it.

Billboard Split The Charts Fourteen Years Ago. The Data Never Followed.

Billboard has been filing R&B and rap in one column for a very long time. Its flagship chart in the lane began as the Harlem Hit Parade in October 1942, became Race Records in February 1945, Rhythm & Blues Records in June 1949, then Hot R&B Sides in October 1958.

Then Hot R&B Singles in November 1962, a fifteen month gap with no chart at all, and Hot Rhythm & Blues Singles in January 1965. Then Best Selling Soul Singles in August 1969, Hot Soul Singles in July 1973, Hot Black Singles in June 1982, Hot R&B Singles again in October 1990.

In December 1999 it became Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks. Since April 2005 it has been Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs.

That is more than eighty years of one idea wearing whatever word the era found comfortable.

Here is the part nobody in the “R&B is dying” thread mentions. On 11 October 2012, Billboard launched Hot R&B Songs and Hot Rap Songs as separate weekly charts, to highlight “the differences between pure R&B and rap titles in the overall, wide-ranging R&B/hip-hop field.”

Hot R&B Songs still runs weekly. The split already exists where songs are ranked. It does not exist where genres are measured.

A Smaller Slice Of A Bigger Pie Is Not Fewer Listeners

The other quiet swap is share standing in for size. US on demand audio streams grew 4.8 percent in the first half of 2026, to 732.7 billion, per Luminate’s midyear report. Global streams rose 9.8 percent to 2.8 trillion.

Across full year 2025, R&B/Hip-Hop was the most streamed genre in the United States, at 349.9 billion US on demand audio streams. The national total that year was 1.4 trillion, itself up 4.6 percent. Rock placed second at 260.5 billion and pop third at 167.2 billion, per A Journal of Musical Things.

A share line can fall while the raw count climbs. Every screenshot of a dropping percentage invites you to read a proportion as an audience.

The Share Went To Dance And To Spanish

The gaining side is identifiable, and it is not a mystery. Dance and electronic was the top US growth genre of the first half of 2026. It added 0.50 share points year over year on 18.9 percent volume growth, most of it from songs zero to eighteen months old.

Language moved too. Spanish reached 9.4 percent of US on demand audio and video streams in the first half of 2026. English fell to 87.1 percent, a record low, a figure DJ Mag also reports from the same release.

None of that is R&B losing listeners. It is other things gaining faster inside a pie that got bigger.

The Sorting Was Already A Judgement Call

The bucket leaks at its edges too, which is reason enough to doubt the container before you doubt the music.

Kaytranada’s Timeless peaked at No. 2 on Top Dance Albums and No. 6 on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. One record, two genre columns, at the same time.

Cowboy Carter topped Top Country Albums and won Best Country Album and Album of the Year at the 2025 Grammys. The same ceremony gave Best Rap Album to Doechii.

Leon Thomas’s Mutt peaked at No. 8 on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums and No. 35 on the Billboard 200. It won Best R&B Album at the 2026 ceremony with an Album of the Year nomination beside it. Every one of those placements is a decision somebody made in a dropdown.

Play these three back to back, then try filing them in one column.

The split already exists where songs are ranked. It does not exist where genres are measured.

9.1 percent

standalone R&B on demand audio volume growth, Q1 2025 versus Q1 2024

1.6 share points

combined R&B/Hip-Hop share loss in US on demand audio streaming, first half 2026 versus first half 2025

349.9 billion

US on demand audio streams for the combined R&B/Hip-Hop bucket, full year 2025

The Miscount Turns Into A Budget

Share figures are not trivia. They shape playlist pitches, marketing spend, and how long a label waits on a slow build before it pulls support.

An R&B artist measured inside a container holding every rap release is judged against a trend line that is mostly not hers. The executive reading that line makes a decision about her record anyway.

The fix is unglamorous and already half built. Billboard has run separate R&B and rap charts since 2012. The consumption reports could carry that same split twice a year.

Until they do, this is the honest sentence. Nobody is publishing enough data to say whether R&B is growing or shrinking in 2026. The last time anyone counted it on its own, it was up.

Lyn R., “Nobody Has Counted R&B By Itself Since Q1 2025,” certifiedFREQ, 18 September 2026. https://certifiedfreq.com

Sources

Note On Sourcing

Billboard.com returned a paywall on every attempt, including its own write up of the 2026 midyear report and its live Hot R&B Songs chart page. Billboard’s chart naming and split history are therefore cited to the Wikipedia chart pages that document them.

The 1.6 share point figure for the first half of 2026 does not appear in Luminate’s public summary of its midyear report. It is cited here to two trade outlets that read the full report, DIY Musician and Music Times, and it is labelled as their figure rather than a quote from Luminate.

Every percentage, share figure and date above comes from a page listed in Sources that was opened and read.

Nobody Has Counted R&B By Itself Since Q1 2025

The Bucket Is Real, And It Is Genuinely Shrinking

Luminate Files R&B As A Subgenre, Not A Genre

The Only Standalone R&B Number In Existence Points Up

One Quarter Is Not A Trend, And That Is Exactly The Problem

Billboard Split The Charts Fourteen Years Ago. The Data Never Followed.

A Smaller Slice Of A Bigger Pie Is Not Fewer Listeners

The Share Went To Dance And To Spanish

The Sorting Was Already A Judgement Call

The Miscount Turns Into A Budget

Sources

Note On Sourcing

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