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Album Sales Are Dying as Fast as Streaming Services Are Rising (rollingstone.com)
In 2018, Best Buy decided to stop selling CDs, with the change partly brought on by record labels' increasing reluctance to even issue them. Both choices are symptoms as well as causes of a seemingly inevitable trend: Buying music is now going out of style nearly as fast as streaming music is rising. From a report: In 2018, album sales fell 18.2 percent from the previous year and song sales fell 28.8 percent, according to U.S. year-end report figures from data company BuzzAngle, which tracks music consumption. Meanwhile, total on-demand music streams, including both audio and video, shot up 35.4 percent. Audio on-demand streams set a new record high in 2018 of 534.6 billion streams, which is up 42 percent from 2017's 376.9 billion streams.
It's tricky to compare the specific unit numbers of sales to streams --since such a comparison would be pitting continuous playback of a certain piece of music against a one-time purchase of it -- but certain other milestones in the consumption market can help highlight just how much streaming is replacing physical sales and downloads in America. For instance: Even though total song downloads are still in the hundreds of millions, they're coming down in scale at the top. In 2018, there was not a single song that broke 1 million sales -- compared to 14 songs that reached that figure in 2017, 36 in 2016 and 60 in 2015. At the 2 million sales mark, two songs took that trophy in 2017, while five claimed it in 2016 and 16 songs made it in 2015, throwing the modest figures of this year's sales into even sharper relief.
It's tricky to compare the specific unit numbers of sales to streams --since such a comparison would be pitting continuous playback of a certain piece of music against a one-time purchase of it -- but certain other milestones in the consumption market can help highlight just how much streaming is replacing physical sales and downloads in America. For instance: Even though total song downloads are still in the hundreds of millions, they're coming down in scale at the top. In 2018, there was not a single song that broke 1 million sales -- compared to 14 songs that reached that figure in 2017, 36 in 2016 and 60 in 2015. At the 2 million sales mark, two songs took that trophy in 2017, while five claimed it in 2016 and 16 songs made it in 2015, throwing the modest figures of this year's sales into even sharper relief.
Doesn't everyone just rip music from YouTube? Certainly good enough for the car, and alternate versions are usually available if one would like (radio sessions, non-released versions, live versions, cover versions, etc.)..
I just use a tiny USB stick in my car, with MP3 files.
At home, I gave in and we have Alexa the associated music service. Merry Christmas to me (I'm working on a couple of Skills)!
I need to run, there's a package from Amazon being delivered....
BlameBillCosby.com
Yes, Amazon sells music downloads on their site. But unlike in the past, where you bought the music and got a downloadable file, now you have to download into an Amazon application on your computer. They want you to keep that file there, and play it in their app, and stay nicely within the Amazon ecosystem.
This is completely incorrect. I regularly buy music from Amazon, and when you go to download it, yes, they do want you to download it into the Amazon Music app, but they also give you the option to download (DRM-free,) MP3s. I always take the second option.