The global music streaming revenue still doesn’t surpass the peak of physical sales in the late 90s

Posted by LetterheadOk1386

8 Comments

  1. But it does when downloads and physical media are added up, which is in the end what should count….(Except artist get less from streams than the other two…)

  2. JustHere_4TheMemes on

    Internet and tech in general is a double edged sword to musicians. Pre-internet/soundcloud/streaming etc. a relative few artists filtered to the “top” to get studio production and physical media distribution access – they were both very expensive. That means 100’s of millions of people basically bought the same top 500-ish artists (for sake of argument – the actual number isn’t the point, the ratio of the market is.)

    Digital recording technology and internet distribution come along and basically commoditize music. Tens of thousands of musicians can now produce and distribute their music who would never be “in the market” prior to the internet. Competition has effectively exploded. In addition to the pirating problem, People who were buying music began distributing their music “budget” far more widely, not just piling on the top artists. With the cost of production and distribution also dropping, the price of the end product drops.

    While the internet made it possible for smaller artists to perhaps earn a living, or gain popularity, on th ewhole it also ensured every individual artist on average is going to earn less, apart from the mega star outliers.

  3. Well duh.

    Physical sales includes the cost of manufacturing CDs and storing CDs and having HMV stores clogging up the high street.

    Now that we don’t need that crap anymore we can just buy the music