Measuring Music, published by the industry’s umbrella group UK Music, found that the growth in streaming services such as Spotify, Deezer and Apple Music is “the key to renewed and continued growth for British music and its artists globally”.
However, its report also highlighted the music industry's unease at the growing power of Google's video streaming platform YouTube, which has been criticised for failing to deliver fair financial returns to artists and rights holders.
According to research the amount of revenue YouTube paid to music labels relative to the number of streams halved last year, which implied potential lost revenue of $755m for the industry.
Measuring Music concluded that the success of artists such as Adele and Ed Sheeran helped the industry to contribute $4.1bn to the British economy in 2015. One in six albums sold worldwide were by UK artists, and British performers took a 17 percent share of the global market.
YouTube needs to fix up. But according to all reports and forecasts, the exponential growth of streaming is going to restore music industry's revenue to its late 90's peak by the end of the decade
Streaming is the answer. Everyone releases their music on all the streaming platforms... I know Beyoncé wants to support JayZ and keep her stuff on Tidal but it's time to put Lemonade on Apple Music, Amazon Music, Pandora and mostly on Spotify. I also urge Taylor to put her next album on Spotify. Spotify is so nice
This is why charts need to stop undervaluing streaming and overvaluing sales. There shouldn't be attempts to equate their impacts on the charts when streaming is how the vast majority of people consume music and it's only getting bigger. Sales stans can cling onto rapidly dying sales all they want, but streaming is the present and future.