A record 100 million Americans now pay for a music subscription — is streaming the final format for fans?
A brief look at the history of music suggests it might not be... as hard as that is to imagine.
The music business is still very much Streaming ft. Everything Else.
Just last week, Spotify announced that it paid the music industry $10 billion in royalties across 2024, in what the company said was the biggest annual payout from a single retailer in history. Now, new data from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) shows that the relationship between streamers and the music business is very much a two-way street.
Last year, the average number of paid music subscriptions in America rose to a whopping 100 million as a record number of us cough up enough each month for on-demand access to our favorite songs through streaming services like Spotify or Apple Music (Apple). Naturally, those regular monthly payments translated to a massive chunk of the total cash that flowed through the recorded music industry in America last year, with total streaming revenues rising to $14.9 billion — roughly 84% of the industry’s top-line figure.
With this latest data from the RIAA confirming streaming’s current dominance, it’s hard to imagine a new format coming along and changing how we all listen to our favorite artists. But, if history is anything to go by, it's not entirely unlikely...
While audiophiles, nostalgia fiends, and (increasingly) Taylor Swift fans sent vinyl sales to a 36-year high of $1.4 billion, streaming is still the only real powerhouse format in the industry, as convenience continues to outweigh audio quality, aesthetics, and the tactile joy of owning physical things for most people in the US.
Zooming out, the RIAA data shows that, when adjusted for inflation, recorded music industry revenues in the US are down 36% from their $27.5 billion peak in 1999, when we were all rushing out to buy albums from Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys on CD.
