What was 2014's most popular album? 'Frozen'

Brian Mansfield | USA TODAY

When it came to overall music consumption in 2014, Frozen iced out Taylor Swift.

Swift's 1989 may have sold more copies than the Disney soundtrack, but Frozen had far more streams, especially once Swift removed her music, including single Shake It Off from Spotify in early November.

The difference — Frozen's 219 million streams to Swift's 26 million, according to Nielsen Music — made Frozen the most widely consumed album of last year.

Nielsen's comprehensive year-end music report, released Wednesday, ranked the year's top albums according to the methodology Billboard now uses to compile The Billboard 200 album chart. With streaming included with sales under that methodology, 2014's list of most popular albums are:

Various Artists, Frozen Taylor Swift, 1989 Sam Smith, In the Lonely Hour Ariana Grande, My Everything Katy Perry, Prism Lorde, Pure Heroine Beyoncé, Beyoncé Ed Sheeran, X Pharrell Williams, G I R L Luke Bryan, Crash My Party

In terms of pure sales, 1989 (released in October) sold 3.661 million copies and Frozen sold 3.527 million over the full year (it was released in 2013). This is the first time since 2005 that two albums have sold more than 3.5 million in a calendar year. However, only four albums topped the million mark, compared to 13 in 2013. Last' year's two other million-sellers were In the Lonely Hour and Pentatonix's That's Christmas to Me.

Frozen sold slightly more CDs (2.26 million) than Swift (2.23 million), but Swift sold more digital albums (1.41 million to 1.26 million). Jack White's Lazaretto was the most popular vinyl album, selling 86,700 copies, and Pharrell Williams' Happy sold 6.46 million downloads, making it the year's most-sold single track.

John Legend had the most popular song on radio with All of Me, which also had more on-demand audio streams than any other track. Meghan Trainor's All About That Bass was the most popular online music video. Combine both video and audio streams, and Katy Perry and Juicy J's Dark Horse came out the winner.

The most popular genres are R&B/hip-hop, followed by rock and pop, each accounting for more than 20 percent of all music consumption. After that, it's dance/electronic and country, each of which account for slightly more than 6 percent of total consumption.

Radio continues to be the most popular method of music discovery, and nearly 25% of all music listening takes place in the car. Smartphone streaming is surging, though: Listening to music on smartphones now exceeds listening to music on iPods, with 41% of listeners accessing music on their smartphones in a typical week, an increase of over 20% versus last year.