According to Mid-Year 2018 RIAA Music Revenues Report from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the music industry has grown, but also shifted dramatically.
The released report isn't at all surprising. But it turns out that streaming media accounts to much more revenue to recording labels and artists, than physical CDs, digital downloads and licensing deal, combined.
From Apple Music to Spotify and Amazon, TIDAL, radio broadcasts and video streaming through services like VEVO, streaming has made more than $3.4 billion dollars so far in 2018. This amount is roughly 75 percent of overall revenue for the record industry.
According to RIAA's report, new user adoption rate for streaming is around 1 million new subscribers for streaming services per month.
While this is small if compared to the number of people who listen to music every month, bur the growth rate is bigger than any other category of recording music business.
Also on RIAA's report, digital download revenues and physical purchases were all down in 2018 by 27 percent and 41 percent respectively.
This continues a downward spiral since online music sharing came to existence.
"Shipments of physical products decreased 25% to $462 million in 1H 2018, a higher rate of decline than in recent years. Revenues from CDs fell by 41% in the first half of the year," detailed RIAA.
However, vinyl sales that have increased in popularity in recent years, have remained steady up with a 13% increasing revenue in 2018. But still far from offsetting other traditional forms of recorded music sales.
"The music streaming economy presents myriad new opportunities, but also its share of challenges too," wrote RIAA.
"According to Nielsen, more than 70,000 different albums were released by mid-year. Finding an audience amongst an extraordinary range of music choices, competing for the user’s attention against other entertainment options on the ubiquitous smartphone, and being prominent on dozens of different digital platforms is not only critical for success, those are attributes that uniquely reside within today’s record company."
"What continues to sustain all of us is an unrelenting focus on the music. Gold or Platinum certified albums this year from Camila Cabello, Drake, Cardi B, Post Malone, Migos, Charlie Puth, Travis Scott and Jason Aldean are just a few of the standouts."
