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Streaming Accounts For 75 Percent of Music Industry Revenue In the US (engadget.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the sign-of-the-times dept.

Mallory Locklear reporting via Engadget: The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has released music industry revenue statistics for the first half of 2018 in the U.S., and on average, revenue growth has slowed. While overall revenue was up 10 percent compared to the same time last year, clocking in at $4.6 billion, that rate is only around half of the increase observed between the first halves of 2016 and 2017. Streaming revenue growth slowed as well, though it was still up 28 percent compared to last year. Notably, streaming accounted for the vast majority of revenue so far this year, with 75 percent of overall revenue coming from streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal.

The numbers also show that more people continue to join paid subscription services, with subscription rates growing by about one million per month. But while streaming revenue is still on an upward trend, the news isn't so good for digital downloads and CD sales. Digital downloads have only made up 12 percent of overall revenue so far this year, down from 19 percent last year, and CD sales saw a whopping 41 percent drop in revenue. To compare, during the same time last year, CD sales were only down three percent from the year before. Vinyl revenue, however, is up 13 percent.

4 of 55 comments (clear)

  1. Streaming = bad (Sqore:20000) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    By a CD, and archive it on a playback device of some sort.
    Why pay and pay and pay hundreds of dollars for a single song?

    1. Re:Streaming = bad (Sqore:20000) by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Funny

      Can you name a contemporary song that you actually wanted to hear twice, let alone more often?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    2. Re:Streaming = bad (Sqore:20000) by KiloByte · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Can you name a contemporary song that you actually wanted to hear twice, let alone more often?

      There's plenty, but none whose label is a member of the RIAA.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    3. Re:Streaming = bad (Sqore:20000) by markdavis · · Score: 3, Interesting

      >"Can you name a contemporary song that you actually wanted to hear twice, let alone more often?"

      Not really. At least not that I have heard. Every now and then, a rare exception comes along. I will note that I just can't stand radio, so haven't listened to it in many years. And it is not just the annoying and never-ending commercials, poor depth, and poor sound quality, but just about all the music sounds like mindless noise to me.

      At first, I thought it was just because I am now "older". But now I am not so sure. What is most fascinating is observing younger adults (I don't count teens, who seem to just listen to whatever; I mean 20's and 30's) discovering older music, like 70's/80's/90's and loving it and gravitating to it. That hasn't really happened much in the past generations with things like 50's/60's music.

      Anyway, almost all my time listening to the 5,000 1970's-2000's songs ripped from my CD's. It is getting tiring, though. And I have spent many hours screening "contemporary" music in different genres, trying to expand the collection, with very poor results.