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Business News Digital Labels & Publishers Top Stories
Streaming income booms, though downloads and CDs remain biggest earners
By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 19 March 2014
The much hyped boom in streaming music resulted in subscription service revenues at the record labels rising by 51.3% and passing the billion dollar mark, the latest digital music report from the International Federation Of The Phonographic Industry confirmed yesterday.
According to the trade group, subscription and ad-funded streaming services combined now account for 27% of the record industry’s digital music income, with an estimated 28 million people worldwide now paying for a music-based subscription service.
Though, as some simple maths will have told you there, the download domain is far from dead, even if the streams have garnered many more column inches in the last year.
Worldwide download revenues dipped 2.1%, probably a direct result of the growth of streaming (or, some might argue, because of competition for download spend from the booming app market), though still accounted for 67% of digital income, which in turn accounted for 39% of recorded music revenue.
Which, of course, is another reminder that while downloads are still big business, so is good old fashioned CD selling. Although physical product sales continue to decline across the board, they still accounted for 51% of revenues worldwide last year.
Though, with that figure down from 56% in 2012, this – ie 2014 – might be the first year when digital combined with public performance and sync income finally out-perform physical sales overall. See you in a year’s time to find out.
