Streaming Accounts For 75 Percent of Music Industry Revenue In the US (engadget.com) 55
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.
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.
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Corporations don't acknowledge debts, or feel gratitude. Any more than sharks or crocodiles do.
Streaming = bad (Sqore:20000) (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?
Re:Streaming = bad (Sqore:20000) (Score:4, Funny)
Can you name a contemporary song that you actually wanted to hear twice, let alone more often?
Re:Streaming = bad (Sqore:20000) (Score:4, 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.
Re:Streaming = bad (Sqore:20000) (Score:4, 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.
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Listening to same music over and over is pleasure (Score:3)
Unlike watching the same TV show over and over, listening to the same set of songs over and over is really pleasurable. I can't tell you why that is but it is and is true for most people.
Your comment which I think wasn't a jest, really got me wondering if people now just think of music as ambiance rather than actual listening or if it's like some zeightgeist trivia contest where one has to be able to say to freinds they have beard the latest songs.
Maybe it's become like the way we consume news always wantin
Amen to that. Mod parent up (Score:2)
CDs were nice because you could load up 5 in the changer and have a thematically consistent set of music in which you didn't need to program or make choices about what songs to play for a few hours.
I suppose that's what these channels based on themes are trying to replicate. I've just never found these satisfying. They tend to either hard to manage (pandora) or play stuff with too wide a catalog in which I never hear the same song again. Or if it's too narrow than I get bored of the channel and have to re
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>"Most often, when listening, I just press shuffle over the entire collection."
Actually, that is the only way I listen to music. Car, phone, work, Sena, bathroom player, whatever. I have them all on "random" across the 5K songs. Sure, it will play something I am not in the mood for at times, and I just "tilt" it with the cue button.
The players don't talk to each other, of course, but each keeps its own randomized list so it will not play the same song again until it either wraps around (which would ta
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at least the Gondry video is cool.
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Which year?
Because there is lots of great music from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s that spans multiple genres: Big Band, Country, Funk, Grunge, Heavy Metal, Jazz, New Wave, Pop, Rock, etc.
Now replace the word contemporary with classical. Does the question change?
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Strange, because I'm paying less money for more music since I started streaming.
It's almost as if different people have different preferences, and there isn't one solution that works for everyone.
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Audacity is an excellent tool for capturing streams. When I moved back from AU I captured in excess of 300 CDs (legally) via Spotify and then cancelled my subscription.
lost golden age (Score:1)
Remember the golden age of internet music? The early BitTorrent era...
When I was a kid my family was poor. No money to squander on wildly overpriced luxuries like CDs. So I grew up without music. Indeed, at that time in my hometown, music knowledge was the exclusive privilege of a handful of rich kids who could afford to buy hundreds & hundreds of albums.
Then, for a few brief beautiful years when I was in school, FREEDOM broke out. Suddenly all the music in the whole world was available to share, even
That makes sense (Score:2, Insightful)
Streaming is convenient and flexible, and 9 out of 10 songs produced today aren't worth the space on a HD to be archived for longer than it takes to listen to them once.
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9 out of 10 songs produced today aren't worth the space on a HD to be archived for longer than it takes to listen to them once.
That explains all the 404 errors I get when I try to download FLAC albums on Mega. They self-deleted to spare me from listening.
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I'm guessing you are so old you are starting go senile, because I can assure you 9 out of 10 tracks were always crap. Even when you were young. You just don't remember all the garbage because you didn't hear it that many times.
Re: People don't own anything anymore (Score:1)
The artists make almost nothing from album sales. The only way an artist makes money is touring. They have front all the expenses to travel the show and make most of their money off t-shirts and other apparel. They have to buy their own CDs from their label but sell them at a premium at their shows.
The record companies figured out how to screw over the artists long before any of us where even born. The biggest worry the industry has is the day a way is found to self publish and have fans easily find you
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Frankly, I don't see how RIAA is going to survive in the future, barring backhanded tactics. I don't listen to the radio anymore and I don't intentionally listen to RIAA produced music at all. Instead, I jump on YouTube and seek out amateur musicians that actually sound quite good and listen to them. Sometimes just searching for a particularly good sounding piano make/model turns up some fantastic amateur musicians. Only middle man here is Google. Thank goodness Google hasn't gotten all censorshippy against
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The set containing "the music industry" and the set containing "performing/working artists & musicians" only narrowly intersects in a Venn diagram.
Even major artists tour because they typically get far more money from live shows + merch sales than they do from the sales of recorded music, whether that be CDs or streaming or whatever.
You should check out local/regional artists and support them if you're tired of corporate auto-tuned
Hard to find CD's (Score:2)
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If only there was a way you could order CD's online and have them delivered to your house.....
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takes too much room, too fragile (Score:2)
CDs take too much room. Especially wasteful are those miserable, easily broken jewel cases. Even without that, I'd rather have a flash drive than a stack of audio CDs. And I'd prefer a denser format, such as FLAC.
CDs are only a little better than vinyl when it comes to toughness. A scratch can ruin a CD, much the same as a vinyl record. A particularly annoying scratch was inflicted by the sharp corner of a DVD burner tray. I had just ripped the video, and when I reached up (the computer was on a hig
Comment removed (Score:3)