The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has published their
mid-year report of ' Music Shipment and Revenue Statistics'
Quote:
For the first half of 2016, strong growth in revenues from subscription streaming services more than
offset declines in unit based sales of physical and digital music download products. Overall revenues
at retail increased 8.1% on a year-over-year basis to $3.4 billion, the strongest industry growth since
the late 1990’s. At wholesale, value increased 5.7% to $2.4 billion.
Paid subscriptions experienced massive growth in the first half of 2016. The entrance of new services like Apple Music and TIDAL, and growth from services like Spotify Premium, helped both revenues and the number of paid subscriptions more than double versus the prior year. First half revenues from subscription music streaming services surpassed $1 billion for the first time, growing 112% to
$1.01 billion.
Subscriptions alone accounted for 30% of industry revenues for the first half of 2016, and the number of paid subscriptions grew 101% to average 18.3 million for the same period. The revenue growth from subscriptions alone more than offset the declines from physical sales and permanent digital downloads.
Revenues from permanent digital downloads (including albums, single tracks, videos, and kiosk sales) declined 17% to $1.0 billion for the first half of 2016. Digital albums continued the trend of outperforming individual tracks. The total value of digital albums was $500 million, down 11% versus the same period the prior year, and digital album units were down 15% to 48.2 million. Digital track sales declined by value 22% to $520 million, with sales volume down 22% to 432 million units.
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