Tool's fifth studio LP, Fear Inoculum, was named the best selling rock album of 2019 in a year-end report on American music consumption trends from BuzzAngle Music. Tool's first album in 13 years sold 344,000 copies since its release in late August, making it also the year's eighth best-selling album overall. The best selling album of the year was Taylor Swift's Lover.
Metallica sold more albums in the U.S. over the past five years than any other rock group, while Queen was the country's top-selling rock act of 2019. Since 2015, Metallica has sold more than two million albums in the U.S., putting the group ahead of the Beatles, Elvis Presley, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. But all rock artists were easily outdistanced by both Adele and Taylor Swift, who respectively sold 7.5 million and five million albums over the past five years.
Still riding the success of the 2018 feature film Bohemian Rhapsody — of which the soundtrack was the second best selling rock album in 2019 after the Tool effort — Queen sold more albums in the past year than any other rock artist, with total sales of nearly 900,000.
Rock was far and away the top format for physical album sales, with 42.2 percent of the year's total, as well as digital sales. But overall, album sales were down 23.2 percent from 2018. Sales of digital albums dropped 26.6 percent, while CD sales dropped 26 percent and cassette sales dropped 11.5 percent. Vinyl sales, however, increased 10.5 percent year-to-year. Rock earned just 14.7 percent of streaming, lagging far behind R&B and hip-hop's 30.7 percent.