Ever since digital music became a viable median to purchase music it has been steadily growing in popularity in the US….until now. 2013 marked the first year in which digital music sales declined from the previous year. The aggregate digital sales of individual music tracks declined about 5.7%, and digital album sales fell .1%. That being said there were still 1.26 billion units of digital tracks sold as well as 117.6 million albums.
So why the drop?
Some say that the decline was primarily due to the rise in popularity of streaming. In 2012 streaming revenue accounted for 13% of revenue for music companies, and it’s a pretty safe bet that this percentage will probably increase in 2013. Afterall, it was in 2013 that both Apple and Google made their music streaming services available to the public. This is not necessarily good news for the artists; the royalties they receive from streams is much less than the royalties they receive from digital purchases.
I for one am kind of glad for the increase in the popularity of streaming. This is not because I prefer streaming to buying digital music but rather because this will (hopefully) give an incentive to the artists to produce more complete albums. By “complete albums” I mean albums that have more than one or two pretty good singles on it. Moreover, I hope we see artists explore different ways of compelling the consumer to buy their albums rather than to stream it.
