Sunday, August 3, 2014

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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