We've heard so much complaining about streaming music that if I were to link you to every single article we've ever done on it, you'd be here until next week (here's a great summation). So with all the negativity surrounding it, streaming music is basically the antithesis of making money, right? Not according to a recent report published by the RIAA.
According to the report, streaming made musicians a total of $1.87 billion last year, beating out CD copies by $20 million in revenue. This is the first time since the invention of profitable music streaming that the medium has beaten out the physical CD format! Could this finally be the end of the scratchable disc? Or was 2014 just a weird year?
It's worth noting that physical sales as a whole beats streaming services percentage-wise, though the physial format as a whole dropped from 35-percent to 32-percent. Streaming went up from 21-percent to 27-percent, so you can see the dissonance here.
Oh, and the vinyl industry was worth $315 million and is just as popular as it was in 1987!
[via The Verge]
