RaduTyrsina
News Team
It's a known fact that music streaming services are becoming more popular, and now we have a new report with fresh data to back this up. According to intel coming from the Recording Industry Association of America, sales in the US from streaming music were $1.87 billion in 2014, while CD sales were $1.85 billion.
Thus, US streaming music revenues have eclipsed CD sales for first time. This is great news for Apple, as it looks to rebrand the Beats streaming service and probably to integrate its technology into iTunes. The report mentions that digital downloads still represented the biggest part of the recording industry's revenue with $2.58 billion. However, the amount represents a decline of 8.7 percent from 2013.
As for streaming revenues, these accounted for 27 percent of the market last year, which is up from 21 percent. Downloads shrank from 40 to 37 percent, and physical products which include CDs,vinyl and cassettes, accounted for 32 percent in 2014.
Also, free advertising-supported on-demand services saw their revenue surge 34 percent to $295 million but paid subscriptions rose 25 percent to $799 million.
Source: Cnet
