
Streaming accounts for 75 percent of music industry revenue in the US - arayh
https://www.engadget.com/2018/09/21/streaming-75-percent-music-industry-revenue/
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bilbo0s
1999 Revenue > USD40 Billion

If I'm understanding this article correctly, then the revenue for 2018
_should_ be somewhere around USD9.2 Billion.

Wow. I had never seen actual numbers on what revenue digital actually brings
in before. And these numbers are _total_ revenue. _Before_ expenses and such.

I can only hope that in this carnage it was the record labels that lost share
size in the pie and the artists got a larger piece. But somehow I think what's
more likely is that the record labels just started splitting the pie with the
tech companies. Or the tech companies _became_ the record labels in some
instances. Probably very few of the artists started getting a larger share of
the pie in this changeover.

It's sad to look at. I guess they make the music for the love of the art
anyway, but it'd be nice to see them get rewarded for it.

~~~
goatherders
Its been a long time since recordings paid artists very well. The money has
long been in touring. If anything, I think the rise in streaming where you can
pick whatever you want makes discovering new music a challenge...which reduces
the primary way artists used to move from unknown to known. At the same time
because its easier to get your music available to a larger audience I suspect
the long tail is much longer than ever before.

~~~
mercer
That's not been my experience, and that of many people around me.

I'm pretty 'vanilla' when it comes to my listening habits. Most of the artists
I listen to were famous enough already to show up on my radar, and then there
are a number of artists I discovered through word of mouth or attending music
festivals. Aside from a few people in my network who often provide me with new
artists to follow, my approach seems pretty common in my network.

But since I started using Spotify, the range of artists that I come across,
follow, or become a fan of, has increased. The total count of artists I listen
to in a given week is much higher than it used to be, and I'm much more likely
to attend a performance when they're in town.

Of course that doesn't mean artists get paid more, but as far as listening and
attending performances, my impression is that it's much better now for
'unknowns' than it used to be.

(obviously this doesn't mean the chances of a random artist/band becoming
successful have increased, it just indicates that the chances of this becoming
so is less dependent on obvious gate-keepers. I'm sure those in the know can
point out many obstacles to becoming successful that are not directly related
to the quality of the music)

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jacquesm
I'm still solidly stuck in the 1600's and the 60's to 80's for the vast
majority of the music that I listen to.

Just the other day I noticed how little 'new' music I've got in my collection,
there is a couple of Passenger songs in there and some lesser known stuff that
my eldest sent me to listen to that got stuck but for the most part whatever
is new is not for me.

At the same time I hate the 'services' economy that we are moving to, the
whole feeling that for the rest of your life you are looking to divide your
income over a large number of forced subscriptions is something that runs
counter to how I want to live.

So I'm happy with my mostly ripped-from-CDs music collection and likely the
music industry will see less than $250 from me for the rest of my time.

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snarfy
They lost control of it with the ipod and apple music. Any song $0.99. That
was the end of the record labels dictating prices. If they held out and
refused apple, they would lose to the other labels. The market was too big.
The ipod, too popular.

They were already feeling the squeeze from retail. Consolidation of record
stores left large retailers like Walmart with the bulk of sales. CD sales
would account for < 1% of Walmart's total sales but would account for > 40% of
the labels sales. This allowed Walmart to undercut the labels own prices and
sell CDs as a loss leader putting downward pressure on overall prices.

