The Streaming Takeover

Thanks to strong growth in streaming subscriptions, music industry revenues in the United States grew 18 percent in the first half of 2019. According to the mid-year report of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), 2019 will likely mark the fifth consecutive year of growth for the music industry that had previously struggled with declining revenues for 15 years.

As the chart, based on RIAA data, illustrates, the music industry really has the rise of streaming to thank for its resurgence. While downloads were never quite able to fully offset the declines in CD sales in the early 2000s, streaming revenues have now been able to compensate for declining physical format and download revenues for four and a half years.

In the first half of 2019, music streaming, both subscription-based and ad-supported, accounted for 80 percent of U.S. music revenues, up from just 5 percent at the end of the last decade.