Andre Yoskowitz
23 Mar 2016 15:15
The RIAA has announced that revenue from streaming has surpassed digital for the first time ever.
In 2015, streaming accounted for $2.4 billion in sales, ahead of digital downloads.
Overall, the industry saw a small 0.9 percent increase in sales to $7 billion, one of the few times the industry has seen any growth in quite some time.
"In 2015, digital music subscription services reached new all-time highs, generating more than $1 billion in revenues for the first time, and averaging nearly 11 million paid subscriptions for the year," RIAA CEO Cary Sherman said in a memo. "Heading into 2016, the number of subscriptions swelled even higher -- more than 13 million by the end of December -- holding great promise for this year."
Of course, the RIAA is never happy and used the announcement to also argue that ad-supported streaming does not pay the artists (at least not much). "The consumption of music is skyrocketing but revenues for creators have not kept pace," Sherman wrote. "In 2015, fans listened to hundreds of billions of audio and video music streams through on-demand ad-supported digital services like YouTube, but revenues from such services have been meager -- far less than other kinds of music services."
Ad-supported streaming brought in $385 million in 2015, while vinyl sales made $416 million, added the RIAA, a generally shocking figure given the billions of streams annually made on YouTube or via Spotify.
Source:
RIAA