Last year, more people bought physical CDs and vinyls compared to songs on iTunes – BGR



[ad_1]

Not surprisingly, sales of downloaded songs have dropped endlessly, thanks to the convenience of streaming options such as Spotify and Apple Music. A new report, however, indicates how few people buy individual digital songs. They are so small that they were outnumbered in 2018 by those who went to school and bought real compact discs and vinyl records.

According to the Recording Industry Association of America, total downloads sales in 2018 – for which iTunes has led the group – have fallen by nearly 30%, reaching just over a billion dollars. The complete downloaded album downloads also decreased by 25%.

To put this in context, download sales accounted for more than 40% of the music industry's revenue in 2013. Last year? About 11%. At the same time, this drop in sales has resulted in an unbalanced reality that goes back to the days before iTunes. According to the new RIAA report, sales of physical media, including CDs and LPs, fell 23% to $ 1.15 billion, reducing sales of digital downloads.

Another interesting news from the new report: music fans bought nearly $ 420 million worth of vinyl in 2018, which Worship of Mac The notes of an article today correspond almost as much as people have spent to buy downloads of iTunes albums last year.

Of course, we should not have to specify the strength behind these trends. According to the RIAA: "Streaming music platform revenues grew by 30% year-over-year to $ 7.4 billion, accounting for 75% of total revenues in 2018 and accounting for almost all of the growth in revenue. year income.

We know that this change has been going on for some time now, which also explains the fairly regular chatter that says that Apple will eventually move away completely from iTunes sales and push everyone to its broadcast program. continued. Apple and Spotify are currently the dominant forces of streaming, which has enabled the average number of paid subscriptions in 2018 to grow 42% over 2017, "exceeding 50 million for the first time in its history," says the RIAA.

In addition, the trend does not slow down. Again, according to the new report, streaming services like Apple Music have collectively added more than a million new subscriptions on average each month in 2018.

By the way, do not be fooled by something positive about the title CDs of this article. While physical media sales declined 23%, CD sales themselves dropped 34% to $ 698 million. This is the first time annual CD sales have been less than $ 1 billion since 1986.

Source of the image: iTunes

[ad_2]

Source link