Streaming services for the first time overtook the usual types of music sales

This week, the Recording Industry Representatives of America (RIAA) has published the results of the audio content consumption market research - for the first time streaming services turned out to be more popular than typical services for buying tracks and ranked them in terms of income.

The RIAA report states that revenue from all streaming services grew by 29% in the year of calculation and amounted to $ 2.4 billion in 2015. But, even despite such a significant growth in recent years, the income of the streaming service is still far from its potential.
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“The consumption of music content is growing rapidly, but the income of musicians is growing much slower. In 2015, fans listened to audio recordings and watched videos hundreds of billions of times with embedded advertising and other ways to monetize through services such as YouTube and others, but their revenues are insignificant, ”said RIAA head Carey Sherman.

In 2015, sales of vinyl records amounted to 17 million copies and brought revenue of $ 416 million. For comparison, hundreds of billions of free auditions through streaming services brought $ 385 million of revenue. Last year, the RIAA also used aggressive tactics to combat online piracy - as part of this association filed lawsuits against MP3Skull, Megaupload and several others. At the same time, the RIAA has entered into several agreements with pandora and SiriusXM to monetize their own music content.

Despite such indicators, large companies are now actively promoting streaming services - Apple continues to develop Apple Music, while other players in the market are trying to launch their own counterparts. And the performers themselves actively use these services, making their albums available exclusively in such services. Kanye West's latest album, Tidal, was a great example, and Beyonce with the latest album, available in the first weeks of sales exclusively on Apple Music.