Over the last decade or so, streaming music has grown not only in popularity, but in terms of revenue as well. Fans love the easy access to their favorite bands and singers, while labels, publishers, and artists love the reduced costs - there are no manufacturing expenses for streaming songs - and how it addresses the constant threat of piracy.
Yet despite how huge streaming music has become, it has still taken a few years for it to become a truly viable model of delivering music. In 2014, it finally overtook sales of CDs in the U.S. However, as promising as that was, many insiders noted that CDs and other physical media have been losing ground over the last 15 or so years.
Now, though, the streaming model has achieved perhaps its greatest feat. According to a recent report from the Recording Industry Association of America, streaming music revenue has finally surpassed all other mediums to become the industry's true cash cow.
A golden age
In 2015, streaming music brought in $2.4 billion, or 34.3 percent of all industry revenue. And though streaming did win out, it was not monumental victory; despite a sharp decline in recent years, downloads of songs and albums still accounted for 34 percent overall.
Of course, several other corners of the music industry had an exceptional year in 2015. Total revenue went up by approximately one percent, for a year-end tally of $7 billion. While CD sales fell 10 percent to bring in just $2 billion, vinyl sales continued to climb, bringing in $416 million in 2015, or nearly $30 million more than in 2014. That makes it vinyl's best year since 1988. Digital subscriptions also had a banner year: Services like Spotify and Apple Music brought in $1.2 billion, for a growth rate of 52 percent.
In a statement, RIAA's senior vice president of strategic data analysis, Joshua Friedlander, said that the industry owes its growth to the acceptance of digital models.
"Overall, the data for 2015 shows a music industry that continues to adopt digital distribution platforms for the majority of its revenue," he said. "While overall revenue levels were only up slightly, large shifts continued to occur under the surface as streaming continues to increase its market share."
Not everything shimmers
It's not all good news for the music business, and in many ways the emergence of streaming as a industry leader is as harmful as it is beneficial.
"The consumption of music is skyrocketing, but revenues for creators have not kept pace," said RIAA CEO Cary Sherman in a statement. "In 2015, fans listened to hundreds of billions of audio and video music streams through on-demand ad-supported digital services like YouTube, but revenues from such services have been meager — far less than other kinds of music services. And the problem is getting worse."
Just how bad is the problem? In 2015, the website Techco Design compiled the revenue generated by streaming sites like Pandora, Tidal, Spotify, and Google Play, among others. For an artist to make $1,260 per month - which is the average for minimum wage nationwide - they'd need about 1.5 million Spotify users to stream a single song over a 30-day period.
That's because Spotify pays only $0.0011 per play, and other services aren't much better. Google Play pays the most at $0.0073, while YouTube ranked the lowest by offering just $0.0003 per play. In September 2015, songwriter Kevin Kadish, who penned Meghan Trainor's big hit "All About That Bass," said that the song's 178 million streams netted him just $5,679.
If nothing else, the rise of streaming means that piracy can be overcome and that people are willing to engage the current model. It also means that artists, labels, and publishers are going to have to do more to make it viable for every party involved.