While the music business might have once hated streaming with a deep and bitter passion, services like Spotify have now become its great digital hope. This is confirmed by news that the first half of 2016 delivered strong growth in revenues, thanks to subscription streaming services that more than offset the opposing declines in physical and digital downloads.
It’s a continuation of the trends already witnessed in 2015, when streaming eclipsed the combined revenues of physical and digital downloads for the first time . The first half of this year has seen retail revenue increase 8.1 percent on a year-over-year basis, which the Record Industry Association of America [RIAA] classes as the strongest growth the industry has seen since the late 1990s, in the days before the digital disruption of Napster.
“First half 2016 streaming music revenues totalled $1.6 billion, up 57% year-over-year, and accounted for 47% of industry revenues compared with 32% in [first half] 2015,” says RIAA .
Paid subscriptions in particular experienced massive growth this year, with both revenues and the number of paid subscribers more than doubling versus the prior year. It’s a reassuring result because, as it’s been noted, pretty much everything else is in decline.
“Revenue from digital downloads and music videos dropped sharply, as did sales of physical CDs. Even music on vinyl—a surprising bright spot for the industry thanks to its relatively high prices—declined, albeit at a slower pace than the other formats,” Mashable wrote this week.
Check out the RIAA report for more information on music sales in the first half of 2016.
