In turn, like New Zealand, global recorded music has enjoyed three straight years of positive revenue growth thanks to streaming, a cash cow that is earning the three major record labels Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group one million dollars every hour from streaming alone.īut what do these changes mean? And is it all good news for both artists and music consumers? Nabeel Zuberi teaches music technologies at the University of Auckland and he says the balance of power has shifted for musicians in the streaming age. Streaming platforms such as Spotify have become the music industry’s single biggest revenue source overtaking physical sales and digital downloads in 2018. Internationally, the situation is similar. In 2018, streaming alone accounted for around $74 million of all revenue – ahead of live performance and physical sales. To put these changes in context: in 2014 the entire New Zealand music industry was worth $66 million. This has also led to four straight years of revenue growth in the local market after fifteen straight years of decline.įor a small market like New Zealand’s, this is significant. In New Zealand alone, streaming now accounts for 69% of all recorded music revenue, a figure which was less than 50% in 2016. With this new-found dominance of streaming has come unprecedented monetary growth in an industry which many deemed was on the way out after the CD boom of the 1990s.
Now, online streaming, the latest in a long line of changes, has shaken the industry like nothing before.Ĭoming on the heels of the digital download and the rise of tech giants such as Apple and Google, music streaming platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, and TIDAL have taken over and become the main source for people’s music listening. The history of the music industry is one of technological developments that have led to substantial transformations in how we have listened to music over the last one hundred and fifty years: from the phonograph in the 1870s, the LP record in the 1940s, the CD in the 1980s, to the digital download in the 1990s. Sam Smith explores how the growth in music streaming has impacted the music industry.
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