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.

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How Streaming Hurts Digital Download Sales

While this blog has posted many times about the decrease of download sales as streaming music has taken off, this chart from Statista illustrates the trend very well.

In comparing the first half of this year with the first half of 2013, you can see that on-demand streaming (which means from a service like Spotify or Beats Music) is up about 50%. Add to that the increase of on-demand music through video services like YouTube, which is up another 35%, and you can readily see why digital album sales are down almost 15% and individual track sales are down 13%.

CD sales are down by more than 19% from the same period, but that most likely would have occurred even without audio streaming becoming as big as it is. CDs will stay around for a while, but the format has long since seen its peak.

The anomaly is still vinyl album sales, which are up a whopping 40% over the same time last year. While that seems like a lot, the revenue derived from that facet of the business is still a figurative drop in the bucket compared to the rest of the recorded music industry, but it's still nice to see.

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