It’s been a good year for digital music
Print Edition
THE recorded music industry has enjoyed its first significant growth since the dawn of the Internet age, as streaming led digital to overtake physical sales, a global trade body said yesterday.
Global recorded music revenue rose by 3.2 percent in 2015 to US$15 billion, fueled by an extraordinary growth in subscriptions to streaming services, said the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.
The growth is the first uptick at a more than marginal level since 1998, when sales grew 4.8 percent year on year.
However, the industry is still down by a third since the late 1990s, when Internet service became mainstream in developed countries and listeners flocked to music sites.
The rapid growth of streaming led digital music to surpass sagging physical sales for the first time last year. The federation said 68 million people around the world now have digital subscriptions, compared with just 8 million in 2010 when it started keeping figures.
Streaming revenue grew by 45.2 percent in the past year, nearly matching sales from digital downloads on iTunes and other sites.
Yet the industry did not cast an entirely rosy picture, saying that revenue was still far below its potential.
“The value of music is still not being fully recognized. Today, there is a real spirit of optimism across our industry, but we are a long way from declaring ‘mission accomplished,’” said Stu Bergen, chief executive for global commercial services at Warner Music Group.
Without singling out YouTube by name, the industry federation took aim at “user-upload platforms” as a persistent drain on the industry.
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