American music fans invest more money on LPs and CDs than on iTunes downloads

How powerful have fallen. Digital downloads, characterized by the 99 cent iTunes tracks that governed the the music Four years ago, US manufacturers made less money than CDs and LPs.

Downloads only accounted for 11% of US label revenue last year, said Thursday a professional group of the music industry. Physical sales – the term for the music formats that you can actually keep, which are mostly CDs and LPs at this point – have recorded 12%. Instead of, streaming music was stifling the demand for downloads. Diffusion Sales accounted for 75% of last year's revenues, according to the end-of-year data provided by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

It was not so long ago, digital downloads and streaming were on an equal footing. In 2015, downloads and streaming each accounted for about 34% of sales in the music industry. But as streaming has grown in popularity, the success of the music industry has soared: total sales have increased by 40% in those three years in which streaming has outstripped downloads.

This underscores the staggering popularity of streaming, which has resulted in a greater cultural shift in consumer relationships with their music. Rather than buying music directly, as we did in the era of CDs and downloads, users are paying more and more monthly fees for songs to everyone on services like Spotify or Apple Music, or listen to free ads on sites like YouTube. . Although this change has caused an uproar among some labels and artists, the growth in the number of subscriptions has fueled the best sales growth in the music industry for years.

Overall, last year, US music retail sales revenue increased about 12% to $ 9.85 billion.

Subscriptions, such as Apple Music's monthly fee or Spotify's fee, were the biggest contributor, at $ 4.66 billion, up 33 percent, the RIAA said.

This number does not include "limited-level" subscriptions, such as Pandora Plus, where members pay monthly fees to remove ads, or Amazon Prime, where members include streaming music. Last year, the industry accumulated an additional $ 747.1 million, an increase of 26%.

Money from ad-supported streaming, such as free Spotify listening, or music videos you watch on YouTube or Vevo, has increased by 15% to $ 759.5 million. (Online radio was the second largest source of streaming sales, with $ 952.8 million.)

At the same time, download sales dropped 26 percent to $ 1.04 billion.

Physical sales declined less, down 23% to $ 1.15 billion. Vinyl, continuing its trend, is the only format that has slowed the decline: vinyl record sales rose 7.9% to $ 419.2 million.