“Streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music now account for the majority of music consumption, according to industry figures that also show a continuing vinyl revival,” Christopher Williams reports for The Telegraph. “BPI, which represents record labels, said that excluding radio last year Britons did more than half their listening via the internet, rising to more than 1.5 billion streams in a single week in December.”
“The claim that streaming accounted for more than half of overall music consumption is based on estimates of listening habits. The trend is nevertheless supported by separate financial data collected by the Entertainment Retailers Association, a trade group comprising streaming services and physical record sellers including Amazon and HMV,” Williams reports. “It said that streaming revenues jumped by 42pc last year to £577m, more than outweighing a steep fall in download sales and a more gentle decline in sales of physical singles and albums.”
“Physical sales were down only 3pc, propped up by a booming vinyl market,” Williams reports. “Some 4.1 million LPs were sold, 20 times as many as a decade earlier, when interest in the analogue format was at its all-time low. Last year’s sales were worth £88m and accounted for one in every 10 physical music purchases.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Steve Jobs was famous for denouncing something right up until he embraced it.
Never say never, but customers don’t seem to be interested in it… The subscription model has failed so far. – Steve Jobs, April 2007
Never say never, indeed.
SEE ALSO:
Spotify files for its IPO – January 3, 2018
Spotify hit with $1.6 billion lawsuit from music publisher – January 2, 2018
Watch out Spotify and Apple Music, here comes Amazon – December 18, 2017
Spotify leads call for investigation into ‘troubling’ Apple and Google app store practices – May 5, 2017
Apple Music passes Pandora and Spotify in mobile usage – March 29, 2017
Spotify hits 50 million paid subscribers – March 3, 2017
Apple Music surpasses 20 million paid members 17 months after launch – December 6, 2016
Naughty Spotify hasn’t been playing by the rules stealing some 21% of it’s catalogue or not paying royalties. May Karma deliver rich retribution.
Proof?
@peterblood72:
They continued to stream music for many years AFTER their contracts with the music labels had expired. Spotify simply didn’t want to pay what the music labels were asking. This is unethical and reflects directly on the people at Spotify.
If I think the price is too high on an item that I want in a retail store, I’m not going to commit an act of shoplifting to protest the price.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/business/media/spotify-reaches-settlement-with-publishers-in-licensing-dispute.html
The article was here on MDN…
https://gizmodo.com/spotify-hit-with-massive-1-6-billion-lawsuit-from-musi-1821717306
Spotify is losing money, has never made a profit, and shows no sign of doing so.
The best thing about the old vinyl LP’s was it was such a great vehicle for album art…some really imaginative stuff back in the day.
Streaming has always been a race to the bottom for artist income.
It’s simply a corporate penny counting excursive in gross numbers for the corporation. It only works by charging the least possible so as to get millions of monthly subscription incomes.
The gross income is huge but then they only pay crumbs to the Artist.
Just like the loss leaders in supermarkets the streaming business is all about getting the people in and spending something in high numbers while giving away the product for nothing in the process.
The numbers back this up with the amount of revenue they are generating while Artist are seeing no true benefit of that income with the whole payment process hidden from view and based on their word rather than real data. All the corporates at Spotify and Apple Music are getting paid so its sustainable for them at the expense of Artists.
Companies like the PRS are the same as they don’t request full data streams to actually make real payments to artist they continue to just follow the charts and take ‘sample’ playlist to Guesstimate the huge mounts they collect. They will get their big fat wages before diving the rest of the money to the artist. So they are happy but it only works if everyone gets something so to keep their millions of members on their books PRS make sure everyone gets some crumbs to keep everyone sweet and in the membership
Because like if you have millions of members you can keep as members by feeding them crumbs you will continue to have the clout in the business to claim the moneys generated.
Everyone is on the take before any money get to the artists who deserve it.
Too many sharks between the money and the Artist and zero transparency all the way down the line.
Streaming is not about music it’s about numbers and greed and power the cheeper you can be the more you squeeze out any competition and the loser is the artist especially when the middle men (smaller sharks) are all taking their fees for being in-between the streamer and the artist
and we must not forget the people consuming it for free on Spotify who get the free lunch curtesy of Spotify.
I hope Spotify’s bubbles burst and the monthly streaming prices go up and the free streaming has to stop.
There needs to be a fair and transparent royalty directly to artist or via a company where their fee is fixed by government so the artist actually gets a clear transparent money trail.
The sale of music is only dying because the streaming is at a ridiculous low monthly price for the service on offer and the only looser is the artists.
Apple should make deals with artists/labels where they will pay more in royalties that go directly to the artist in exchange for said artist(s) promoting Apple Music. Whether it is exclusive content (playlists, music videos, VODs, etc) or just using social media to promote the service.
If artists think Apple “has their” back it could persuade them to talk more about the service even if it is just word of mouth. Apple has the money to pay more and it could in the long run give them a decent ROI.
. . . apart from radio. 🙄
If they can’t make money with 60 million paying subscribers…. how many would they need to break even? 70? 80 Million? Unless they start to offer something more than music to draw in more users and/or up the subscription price I can’t seem them lasting long. Apple is probably loosing money with Apple Music but they have the rest of their multi billion dollar product lines to make up for it.
Music is worth paying for- as in buying. Rental Rap is another matter, feel free.