Superstars Account For Less Than You Think

Most of us think that only the top 1% in music, the superstars, make most of the money.

Well, they certainly do when you take touring and merch into consideration, but not when you look at sales and streams, which will surprise many industry naysayers.

Rockonomic did a recent study based upon Nielsen's 2014 music report and found the following:

• The Top Ten CD albums account for only 6.624% of total CD Album Sales.

• The Top Ten Digital Tracks account for only 3.759% of total Track Sales

• The Top Ten On-Demand (Stream) Tracks account for just 0.98% of total Track Streams.

If these figures hold true for this year as well (and there's no reason to believe they won't), it shows that when it comes to streaming, the average consumer's taste goes beyond the hits.

It seems that the music business is a lot more democratic than we give it credit for. Artists and bands should take heart in the fact that there appears to be plenty of room for other music besides what comes from the superstars.

---

Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this blog at no cost to you (just click here).

Even In Music It's The Top 1%

Most streaming and download music services have more than 20 million songs available, which should be more than enough for any one lifetime of music discovery. But music discovery isn't something that most people seem to be interested in, at least according to the numbers quoted in an article on The Atlantic.

• First of all, the top 1% of bands and solo artists now earn 80% of all the revenue from recorded music. That's pretty depressing.

• But it gets worse. The 10 most popular songs accounted to almost 2% of all streams in both 2013 and 2014. That means that 1 in ever 50 to 60 streams on Spotify, Soundcloud or YouTube will be a top 10 song.

• A typical listening session is around 3 1/2 hours, but no matter how musically cutting-edge you are, there will still be at least one top 10 song in the playlist.

The fact of the matter is that some people love to discover new music, but most people don't actively take the time to do so and would rather be spoon fed by radio or some other passive service. That means that social buzz means more than ever to a new artist. You can make new music, but the world isn't going to beat a path to your door to hear it.