Music sales grew at a robust pace for a third straight year in the US last year as listeners kept flocking to streaming outlets, an industry monitor said on Wednesday.
Analytical firm BuzzAngle Music said that consumption in the world’s largest music market jumped 12.8 percent last year, well outpacing the 4.2 percent growth seen a year earlier.
On-demand streaming services led by Spotify AB are quickly replacing downloads on platforms such as iTunes, which shook up the music business a generation ago.
BuzzAngle Music found that nearly three times as many songs were streamed on an average day in the US — 1.67 billion — than the 563.7 million tracks that were downloaded over the entire year.
Audio streaming grew overall by more than 50 percent last year from the previous year.
In more good news for the industry, BuzzAngle Music said that 80 percent of audio streams came through subscription sites, as the music business encourages listeners to pay monthly rates rather than seek out songs for free online.
The growth reflects a reversal of the long rut in music sales following the rise of the Internet.
However, not everyone is cheering, with many artists complaining that they are seeing little of the profit.
In a recent Twitter thread that drew wide attention among artists, Geoff Barrow of English trip-hop group Portishead said it was “almost impossible to make a living” through Spotify for musicians who do not figure out how to “work the system well.”
Spotify counters that it has provided a rare source of growth and helped bring new audiences to artists, who increasingly make their living off concerts rather than recordings.
Spotify faces a growing number of rivals including the streaming services of tech giants Apple Inc and Amazon.com Inc, as well as Paris-based Deezer and rapper Jay-Z’s Tidal.
While sales of full albums kept dropping last year, there was one big exception — vinyl.
Album sales on vinyl grew by 20 percent, keeping up the revival of the classic format that has been embraced anew by hardcore fans and collectors.
Vinyl buyers disproportionately bought rock and older titles. The top-selling vinyl title of the year was a soundtrack to the superhero film Guardians of the Galaxy, which was first released in 2014 and featured songs by music legends such as David Bowie and Marvin Gaye.
The taste of vinyl lovers was sharply different from mainstream choices. Pop superstar Taylor Swift’s Reputation was by far the top-selling album of last year, selling nearly 1.9 million copies, according to BuzzAngle Music.
Swift maximized sales by keeping Reputation off streaming services for its first three weeks — an increasingly unusual commercial strategy that only stars with a dedicated fan base can pull off.
Sales of cassettes — which have also found a renewed following, in part for their kitsch appeal — more than doubled last year, but at fewer than 100,000 copies, the format remains miniscule in the overall market.
The US sales are in line with global trends. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry will release worldwide figures in the coming months.
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